The Terai Tiger

[Sanju]

*This image is copyright of its original author

This tiger has emerged from a cooling mud bath at Manas National Park in India. Researchers can identify individual tigers based on their unique array of stripes. Credit: WWF-India. Courtesy of “Candid Creatures: How Camera Traps Reveal the Mysteries of Nature,” by Roland Kays (May 2016, Johns Hopkins University Press)

The pioneers in camera-trap research were scientists studying felids, or cats. “It was all about the tigers and the jaguars and these big species that were so endangered and so impossible to study any other way,” says Kays. Using camera-trap images, researchers can identify individual cats from their unique markings, enabling them to “estimate densities and numbers of animals and count them and track them over the years,” says Kays.

But these days, zoologists, field biologists, and even citizen scientists employ camera traps to spy on all sorts of animals, for various reasons. For instance, the footage might help them better understand the mere presence of species in an area, or how wildlife uses a certain resource, such as vegetation or a highway overpass. Reply