If an animal or bird eats food with micro chips, can it be tracked?

Say we put out some food for a certain animal or bird we want to track
with one of those micro chips like they plant in pets like dogs. The
animal/bird eats the food and swallows one or more of the chips.

Would the satelite or however that works get signals so we could track it?
The idea would be to use food for animals that are not "chewers" but
"swallowers". Do you read me?
John P.

Wouldn't the chip get rejected, ejected or digested?

I can't see it functioning very long inside any animal, whatever.

In theory, you could put an RFID chip in a small plastic bead. Your
range would be very short and it wouldn't stay in the animal very
long. That's assuming that you could get the critter to ingest the
thing. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Marlin Perkins...he tagged the animals, as I recall from Mutual of
Omaha presents...They would shoot them with tranquilizers, (big
animal) or net them (birds) and tag them with transponder bracelets or
collars.

Maybe it'd like some microfiche to go with the microchips.  







(Sorry!)

Interesting idea but it doesn't seem feasible to me. Most passive
monitoring system similar to what is being done with family pets
(where a small micro chip the size of a grain of rice is inserted
under the skin) can only be read at 1 ft or closer. Other systems (not
microchips, but radio-frequency emitters) that can be read at longer
distances require batteries and are generally much larger. I doubt
that you can get an animal to swallow it. But hey, you never know.
Mybe someone else with more knowledge on these gadgets will tell you
it's possible. This question reminds me of a clever screen that was
done to identify leeches that had lost the ability to swallow. The
investigator mixed metal shavings into the food of the leeches and
after they had fed passed a strong magnet over them. Those who
couldn't swallow had not ingested the shavings and were not picked-up
by the magnet. I don't think this would work for you.

It is possible, but right now, it is not commercially feasible.  The
main plroblem is that even "swallowers" like many birds, for instance,
also swallow stones and gravel along with their food to aid in
digestion.  Your tracker would have to be able to withstand the
gravel.

Also, the smaller your tracker, the smaller the range.  Using a
passive detector, like RFID is the best way to go, but range is
limited to 50 or so feet.

Finally, specifically in the case of birds, you have to be careful as
to not chosse a device that will mess with the birds' instinctive
navigation abilities.  Birds are believed to navigate via the earth's
magnetic fields.  This theory was established based on migrating birds
often getting "lost" during electrical storms and an experiment was
performed where a set of homing pigeons had magnets taped to their
heads.  The control group returned home; the magnet group was doomed
forevermore.