Elephant got spooked

• by mr_seeker

  Apparently this elephant is a bit camera shy...

  Posted April 22, 2015 7:15 PM

• by DZM admin

  Great video; great find! 😃

  Posted April 22, 2015 7:34 PM

• by MimiA scientist, moderator

  @mr_seeker - most of the elephants do not like the camera traps if they notice them. We have some "nice" videos of elephants trashing our cameras from a couple different sites (the last things those cameras ever recorded...). Because we don't like the idea of disturbing the animals, the first solution to this problem was getting cameras where the infrared sensor was hidden, that was our first major step forward in bothering the elephants less. The second solution, which we got from our collaborators at the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, was to coat the cameras in a nice thick layer of elephant poop. This way the human smell is masked and the elephants ignore the cameras more.

  Posted April 22, 2015 7:56 PM

• by DZM admin in response to MimiA's comment.

  ... so you're saying that all of these cameras, the ones we are using to watch this project, are caked in elephant dung? 😄

  Posted April 22, 2015 8:58 PM

• by NuriaM scientist, moderator

  wow!!! it´s a very beautiful young female (8-10 years old).
  Great video!

  Posted April 23, 2015 8:36 AM

• by MimiA scientist, moderator

  @DZM well not ALL of them 😉 Sadly at many sites the elephants have been hunted out or are at very low densities 😦 but yup, where the elephants are active we have poop covered cameras!

  Posted April 24, 2015 12:21 PM