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Link to newsround

Why do these water voles have glittery poo?!

A water vole - a small brown haired semi-aquatic creature that resembles a brown rat - standing on a chunk of earth surrounded by water.Getty Images

Conservationists say numbers of water voles have declined by as much as 90% in the past 30 years

Conservation experts in Wales have learned that if you want to find out more about an animal's daily habits, you don't have to set up expensive trackers or high-tech camera equipment to follow them.

You just have to put edible glitter in their food.

It is all part of a new effort to save water voles from extinction by tracking their movements in the wild.

Many years ago, water voles used to be commonly found in lots of areas across Wales, but the small, brown rodents are now a very rare sight.

So with the help of vets, the team from the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC) are taking an unusual course of action.

The INCC hopes that by offering a group of captive-bred water voles pieces of apple with edible glitter on them, the sparkle should come out in their poo.

If it works, they will then continue the experiment in the wild, making it easier to track the water voles' whereabouts and other habits.

They are even planning to track different families of voles, simply by using different colours of glitter for each group.

The plan is to see how far the water voles travel, and then make changes to their habitats in order to help them survive and breed.

Based on the animals' movements, conservationists can remove certain invasive trees that have a negative impact on water vole's habitats, block off unsafe routes for them and help the species disperse through the landscape.

A man's hands holds an apple which is covered in purple glitter. Underneath the apple is a small glitter container with its cap removed.BBC News

The glitter used is the same stuff you may use when decorating cakes you have baked

Rob Parry, chief executive of INCC, said his team had made sure they checked with vets to ensure the edible and biodegradable glitter - the type used to decorate cakes - would not be harmful to the semi-aquatic creatures.

"It's something that we've done in nature conservation before for other species, for badgers in particular where we use pellets to put in with peanuts, which badgers love," said Mr Parry.

"So we've taken that idea and scaled it down to water vole size, which means using glitter."

Water voles are often mistaken for brown rats and are becoming increasingly rare in the wild due to their wetland habitats being drained and predators, like the invasive American mink, hunting them.