[University of Sydney ecologist Catherine] Price and her team ground-tested her theory, literally, by putting a chicken scent in Vaseline and spreading it across thousand-hectare sites where endangered shorebirds nested. Because the scent showed up before the birds, and because it was everywhere and so not a useful clue toward finding dinner, ferrets and stoats left the shorebird nests alone. Nest predation decreased more than 50 percent, an effect that lasted a month.

— Read more in What the nose doesn't know helps wildlife: Using olfactory cues to protect vulnerable species at ScienceDaily.