dessalles

Yes, that’s an elephant carrying a video camera. And yes, that’s a monkey grabbing said camera. For three years, elephants were employed to film a documentary on tigers in Pench National Park, India. BBC reports:

Cameras held by elephants’ trunks have been used to provide an intimate view of tigers in the jungle.

Because the big cats are used to the presence of elephants, the tusked giants were able to get far closer to them than a human film crew ever could.

Thanks to the “trunk-cams”, the team was able to follow four newborn tiger cubs all the way through to adulthood.

The footage was recorded over a period of three years in the Pench National Park in India.

This isn’t strapping electronics to animals. This is elephants trained to carry and set down HD cameras. Watch the videos - it’s even more absurd than it sounds. One camera, which looks a bit like R2D2 disguised as a tree, is equipped with wheels and can be driven around remotely when it’s set down on the jungle floor.

How long before the elephants start using these cameras for their own puropses? Poachers caught on tape! I imagine at some point an elephant will find these cameras, which are ergonomically designed for tusks and trunks, to be a useful solution for some sort of pachyadermal problem. Anyone know examples of animals subverting human technology? Michiko Nitta envisions the Animal Messaging Service, a global communications network enabled by the RFID tracking tags already attached to migratory animals (Pruned has good write-up on the project).

However, Jungle Book this is not. The AMS isn’t for chatty animals; it’s actually designed as an Internet alternative for, people who Nitta refers to as, “Extreme Green Guerrillas.” These environmentalists “are against using the Internet or mobile phones for communication, as this method will tie them to big corporation.” But enough of this human parochialism. Maybe the “E.G.G.” should stop worrying about using animals to send each other secret messages, and instead supply these animals with an aresenal to combat the human environmental crisis. Could we design tools for monkeys to fertilize and seed deforested land? Or how about strapping hyrdo-powerd devices to the backs of whales to distribute carbon-dioxide-consuming Phytoplankton throughout the ocean? And short of building a massive Doomsday Vault, could we develop technologies to help animals survive a global catastrophe? If elephants can film documentaries and chimps can play videogames, they’re probably capable of learning much more useful activities.