A big cat rolls around on the ground playfully with her cubs. A giant anteater wallows in the mud, taking a cooling bath. Lots of animals pause, take a moment, and stare.
The first camera traps were developed about a century ago, but they were first used as an important tool to study wildlife in the early 1990s, study co-author Robert Wallace, director of WCS’s Greater Madidi-Tambopata Landscape Program, tells Treehugger.
The findings were published in the journal Ecology.
Animals Bathing and Napping
When the study was complete, researchers had 154,123 images of 317 species. That included 185 birds, 119 mammals, and 13 reptiles.
The most frequently photographed mammal was the spotted or lowland paca (Cuniculus paca), a rodent, which was recorded nearly 12,000 times. The most snapped bird was the razor-billed curassow (Pauxi tuberosa), which was recorded more than 3,700 times. And the most camera-seeking reptile was the gold tegu lizard (Tupinambis teguixin) which was caught on camera 716 times.
But lots of other fascinating moments and animals were recorded.
“Camera traps pick up animals when they are least expecting it—for example, giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) taking a mud bath, a crested eagle (Morphnus guianensis) drinking and taking a puddle bath, or a puma or cougar (Puma concolor) taking a nap.”
The camera traps collected data from eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.
Catching Rare, Shy, and Nocturnal Species
Camera traps are critical to wildlife research because they are a non-invasive way of collecting information. Well-designed camera trap studies that use multiple camera trap stations can monitor wildlife populations and how they change over time.
“For species that are individually recognizable, like jaguars or ocelots, we can even calculate population densities and then estimate how many occur in a given area,” Wallace says.
“Many of the most cryptic species are incredibly difficult to study because they are so hard to observe, either because they are rare, shy, nocturnal, or all three (!), but multiple camera traps left in the forest for 1-2 months or more can observe them for us.”
Advanced technology has made camera trap usage easier, but there are still issues in the field.
“With the advent of digital cameras, we can now monitor camera traps when we visit them to check batteries and SD cards periodically in the forest, but prior to that we had to wait to develop sometimes hundreds of film rolls before we knew what we had photographed!” Wallace says. “Our camera traps are precious and sometimes we have to rescue them from sudden flooding events.”
Having this massive database will be critical for continuing research, scientists say.
