Sunday, 3 December 2006

Tracking animals in google earth..

Very Spatial links to a few sites that use satellites to track animals. Nothing new perhaps, but in the case of the loggerhead turtle, they are now using googlemaps to track these creatures potentially offering a wealth of interesting information to would be adopters. Another interesting site WhaleNet has a list of marine animals it keeps track off using satellite beacons. Most of this data isn't rendered 'live', but they certainly have interesting maps and other data.

It makes me wonder - we've been doing this for a long time, and there must be a whole host of data available. I think a lot of people would be seriously interested in tracking specific species or individual animals within google maps. It perhaps poses a bit of a moral question of using wild animals for 'recreation', but besides the obvious attachment of a sensor (which it can be argued is firstly for scientific purposes) , there is little impact on the creature's life.

I might choose an animal for this blog ..and we'll keep track of it. More soon.

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