Kids Using Camera Traps for the First Time

It isn’t often you hear kids being little field scientists. With lots of camera traps lying around, we thought it would be a great idea to have kids understand the applications of using camera traps for monitoring wildlife. This summer, we split a group of kids into 3. One night, we gathered them around after dinner and asked them questions about wildlife activity and behaviors. We tried to help them think about why animals would appear in one place but not in others, why some places might have more animals than other places and why is getting information like this helpful for scientists. We used examples of the local wildlife in the area, such as macaques, squirrels, wildboars, and muntjacs. All of them have heard of these animals and we tried to help them piece together some understanding of their movement activity, habitat needs, and dietary preference. 

We led kids to think about all the factors every camera trapper must consider, such as prior knowledge of the area, animals of interest, camera view and angle, camera settings, etc. Their hopes were up when we suggested where there was a likelihood to capture which animals. We chose three different locations, one in a banana plantation, one by a stream, and another in the middle of the forest. In just three days, we were able to capture many macaque and muntjac footage. We spoke about areas of improvement and tried to interpret what the captures could tell us, for example, we tried to answer whether or not macaques were abundant in the area. The kids said yes! 

A few images of the mammals that were captured by the camera traps: