Hey everyone! Have you ever wondered what kinds of animals are out there in the wild? How would you find them? What if you couldn’t see them? Well today we’re going to talk about using environmental DNA to figure it out. Let’s get an introduction so we’re all on the same page. Every organism has DNA. It carries information about how the organism will live and function. And as that organism moves throughout the environment it can leave behind little bits of DNA. It’s called environmental DNA or eDNA. It can be things like hair, fur, skin, urine, saliva, and blood. It could even be mucus like from the snail. And even the most rare organisms leave behind these traces. All a researcher has to do is sample the soil, the water, or the sediments to find the eDNA. This technique has been used a lot to study organisms that live in the ocean, but it hasn’t been used on land very much. The researchers in this study wanted to know if they could use eDNA to find evidence of a really cool organism on land: the golden mole! It’s hard to find them because they burrow. There are four different species that live on the west coast of southern Africa: De Winton’s golden mole, which is possibly extinct, The Cape golden mole, Grant’s golden mole, and Van Zyl’s golden mole which is endangered. So the researchers used eDNA to figure out which of the four species were in the area.