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National Geographic : 2005 Nov
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t's the end of the dry season in Panama, and the jungle is parched. On a forest floor thickly littered with dead leaves, photographer Christian Ziegler stands perfectly still, listening intently to the beeping of the radio-tracking device his assistant is operating. Nearby, perhaps only 30 feet away, an ocelot is on the move, according to the receiver's con stantly shifting pattern of beeps. Yet despite the crackling ground cover and the fact that this feline predator can be as large as a medium size dog, Ziegler can't see it or hear its steps. His human senses have been foiled by the cat, whose spotted coat helps it blend into the dappled light of the forest. The receiver gradu ally goes quiet as the ocelot departs, unseen and unheard. Ziegler later comments, with mixed frustra tion and awe, "In six months I probably saw them with my own eyes only six times usually for a split second as they flitted away." The stealth of this species (Leopardus pardalis)and the heavy forest cover in which it often lives-its range spanning the Americas from south of the Amazon Basin north to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas-make it tough on scientists trying to observe ocelots in the wild. "You can't sit in the Land Rover with binoc ulars like you're watching a lion stalk on a savanna," says Roland Kays, curator of mam mals at the New York State Museum. He is studying interactions between the ocelots of Panama's Barro Colorado Island (BCI) and the cat's favorite prey-a seven-pound rodent called the agouti. Here on BCI, Kays and Martin Wikelski of Princeton University are testing a ground breaking animal-tracking system called the Automated Radio Telemetry System, or ARTS. With funding from the Levinson Family Foundation and the National Science Founda tion, the system was installed by the Smithso nian Tropical Research Institute, which has run a research station on BCI for 82 years. Ocelots and agoutis were the first species to put ARTS through its paces. Traditional wildlife radiotelemetry requires SOCIETY GRANT several researchers to This Research Committee scramble about with project is supported by receivers to triangulate your Society membership. 72 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC " NOVEMBER 2005 the position of an animal that had previously been trapped and collared with a transmitter. In contrast, ARTS consists of seven permanent radio towers positioned across the island. They pick up and relay signals to computers that constantly monitor dozens of animals. "You can gather more data in one week than you can in years of traditional telemetry;" says Kays. If he wants to know the daily activity sched ules of his subjects (as well as of other species the system now tracks, such as sloths, mon keys, and opossums), he can simply scan the computer. One program produces a graphic
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