{"id":930,"date":"2026-05-13T11:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/dice\/?p=930"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:44:18","slug":"dice-students-smash-all-time-mammal-challenge-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/dice\/2026\/05\/13\/dice-students-smash-all-time-mammal-challenge-record\/","title":{"rendered":"DICE Students Smash All-time Mammal Challenge Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University Mammal Challenge<\/a> is an annual competition designed to raise awareness of British mammals and gather data on mammals living on UK university campuses. The challenge runs from the first week of February until the last week of April (National Mammal Week), to help boost mammal records during a season when records are often lower. Teams from universities across the country compete to collect points, through hosting activities for staff and students like talks, workshops, nature walks, and surveys.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year was the first year the University of Kent entered a team – the Rodentifiers, made up of BSc Ecology and Conservation students Alex, Elinor, Nat, Nathan, and Tristan. Not only did the team take home first place, they smashed the all-time record of 28,650 points by almost 50,000 points, with a total of 78,000 points!<\/span><\/p>\n

Rodentifiers team member, Elinor, shared more on the events that led to their victory. “Over the course of the three months that the challenge was running, we were able to organise 11 events including bat surveys, habitat creation events in collaboration with Kent Community Oasis garden and a Mammal Valentines event that had a lot of engagement from everyone in DICE! We also had 20 camera traps up across campus, which captured over 60,000 images.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t