Roadkill in 2005 and 2009

I chose to study how much/what type of  roadkill there will be in a period of the same two weeks in 2005  and 2009. My hypothesis was that there would be more roadkill as the two weeks would go on because it will get warmer so animals will be done hibernating and birds will come back from the south. I think that there will be about the same amount of roadkill in 2005 than in 2009 because it is the exact same time in the year. This might not be correct because maybe there were rabies in an animals’ population or maybe the climate might not have been the same.

I was not very surprised with the results I got with this project. It turned out that almost every animal was killed the same amount of times. The only thing that was a little strange was that there were 3 chipmunks killed in 2005 and none in 2009. Another thing that was strange was that there were 6 grey squirrels killed in 2009 and 1 in 2005.

I expected all of the roadkill amounts would’ve been the same.  I think that the grey squirrel’s population has grown rapidly in the last few years. It might have found humans’ trash outside and it’s eating that instead of acorns and its normal food. I also think that the squirrel is taking the chipmunks’ food because there are more squirrels now than in 2005 and there were no chipmunks in my data, but there were many squirrels.

Next year, I think that there will be more chipmunks and less squirrels because the squirrels will not have enough food and some of them will die. I think that people will also start taking better care of our earth so the roadkill will all be even with every animal. People will start riding their bikes more so there won’t be as much roadkill. I would study the amount of roadkill for one month instead of two weeks so I can really look at the more overall results.