Mondo Knows Facts

Camera traps count animals without meeting them

Heat and motion triggers photograph passing wildlife, day or night Researchers place the units along trails and use the timing and patterns of images to estimate populations. Infrared flash avoids disturbing nocturnal animals. Machine learning is now used to sort millions of images far faster than people. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Camera traps count animals without meeting them: Camera trap for detecting the Jerdon's Courser
PJeganathan ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

Smithsonian

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Tags: fieldwork, technology, conservation

Camera traps count animals without meeting them: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Heat and motion triggers photograph passing wildlife, day or night. The figure is taken from Smithsonian, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a animals fact?
Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.