The latest in documenting animal behavior: The Deer-cam

Josh Millspaugh of the University of Missouri recently completed an interesting stage of a research project that represents a new stage in monitoring wild animals. He collected over 200 hours of deer-eye footage by mounting tiny wireless cameras on three deer which were living within a 10 acre park. Two male deer had the cameras mounted on their antlers, while a doe had a camera around her neck. Millsbaugh said that he was surprised to see the near-contant grooming and physical contact among the animals; more footage will be collected next year from some free-roaming deer, and researchers hope to gain insight into deer behavior, specifically what leads up to a deer being involved in an automobile accident.

After decades of monitoring animals through radio-track collars, I think it's really exciting to see a quantum leap forward in the quality of data that can be gathered from a tagged animal. In fact, I'm not sure why it's taken so long for someone to do this. Maybe camera technology has just made it feasible for the first time. I look forward to the shark cam, the polar bear cam, and scads of information about all of the other animals which we've been struggling to observe in the face of logistical difficulties. Now, if I could just get a telemarketer cam, maybe I could learn how to better avoid those fearsome creatures...

Deer-vehicle collisions: The Two Billion Dollar Problem
http://www.giscafe.com/technical_papers/Papers/paper005/

For links to a bunch of interesting animal webcams, including cockroaches and gorillas:
http://www.abirdseyeviewof.com/Junglerock.html