tracking a wolf with GPS
Dec 29, 2009 gps navigation, gps tracking, misc news
Bunch of U.S. Geological Survey researchers decided to put a GPS enabled collar around a wolf – which they named Brutus – and tracked him from July to end of November.
During this time they got updates from the animal every 12 hours for a total of 289 location updates. Considering today even cheap GPS receiver can provide one second updates makes us think they were very conservative about the battery.
They’ve discovered a lot about wolves’ traveling habit. For example the wolf traveled about 1700 miles during this time and the longest run was almost as long as a marathon which Brutus finished under 84 hours. However these are all under-estimates since the calculations are based on 12-hour readings and this wolf probably does not walk along a straight line as seen on this map.
Oh, and if you’re wondering to yourself – how did a wolf make it across that giant body of water – you’re not alone. It was all frozen at the time and could be traveled on foot/paw.
You can read more about the research on the arctic wolves of Ellesmere Island on their blog…
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December 29th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Wow, very cool indeed.