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Codebreaker

Scientists use sensors to get close-ups of wild animals; now you can see all this online

John Moe Feb 28, 2011
Codebreaker

Scientists use sensors to get close-ups of wild animals; now you can see all this online

John Moe Feb 28, 2011

The Smithsonian has launched a new website that features more than 200,000 photos taken by researchers from automated cameras. The cameras have motion sensors that are tripped when an animal passes by in a certain place, and you can go to this website to see “photos of wildlife captured at close range, from the head-on stare of a jaguar in Peru to inside the mouth of a giant panda in China.”

From the Smithsonian:

All of the photos are untouched and appear exactly as they did when they were taken from the cameras. The website includes both still photos and video clips of more than 200 species of mammals and birds, and provides links through social media such as Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to allow the public to share and comment on the photos. The site also provides reference links from each photo to corresponding species pages at the Encyclopedia of Life, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s own “North American Mammals” page.

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