SIFAKA BLOG

The Cheetah Conservation Fund uses something called a camera trap to get information about wild cheetah populations and also our black rhinos. The best part of a camera trap is that you can collect a lot of information without disturbing the animals at all.
Basically, a camera trap consists of two camera stations that are set up along a path or by a known cheetah play-tree. You usually choose a path that you know an animal might walk along, and a play-tree is a tree that cheetahs will use to mark their territory and advertise for a mate. In many ways, play-trees are the center of the cheetah’s social world.
Anyways, we set up what looks like a camera on a pole on both sides of the play-tree or both sides of a path. Then, when a cheetah or rhino walks past the cameras, a motion sensor makes the cameras take a picture. Because you have two cameras, you get a picture of each side of the animal. For an animal like a cheetah, this allows you to find spot patterns that help identify one cheetah from another. Camera traps allow you to identify individual animals, know how many animals live in a certain area, monitor their movements, and even to know when during the day the animals are active. They’re great!