telophase: (Default)
telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2015-04-24 03:24 pm

citizen science ahoy!

If you've got a few minutes to kill, Zooniverse has another camera-trap project, this one focusing on chimpanzees (and other animals) in West Africa. It's simple: you watch a 15-second video from a camera trap somewhere in the bush, and mark any animals in in and what they're doing. (If it's chimps, they have a couple more questions.) Answer to the best of your ability: if you get it wrong, it's OK because they show each video to many volunteers and the wisdom of the crowd has been shown, statistically from the Snapshot Serengeti project, to work quite well in IDing what's there.

Anyway, sometimes you're rewarded with awesome videos like these two juvenile male elephants play-fighting!

EDIT: There's also this (human) guy dancing with a machete. Unknown at the moment if he's a researcher there to deal with the cameras, a poacher, or a local of another sort. Either way, he's got some moves.