Winding down

Today is our last day and night of data collection! We were supposed to leave yesterday, but I got sick and set back our schedule by 2 days. I'm really excited to snip the hairs off the 3 toed jerboas today and see how that affects their interaction with the sand! We also want to run the animals on the harder substrate and maybe catch some more gerbils to increase sample size. The more I think about it, the more it seems like we have to do.

Looks like rigging the legs to a penetrometer isn't going to work since there is no resistance to bending in the ankle joint. My new plan is to CT scan them and do FEA as well as drag them through different kinds of sand back in a lab.

I'm pretty sad that we'll be leaving tomorrow. Our little agricultural regiment 222 feels like home now that everyone in the town knows us. There are a lot of people we'd like to meet up with one last time before we go, but it looks like we won't have enough time. I'm also going to miss the amazing view of the TianShan mountains we get every day.