Gadgetory

the mountain lions the bobcats the coyotes these are the animals that greet Trevor a bear on his computer every morning possums skunks raccoons squirrels rabbits great horned owls hawks jays these creatures all call Jasper Ridge home a biological preserve owned by Stanford University in Northern California to capture these images a bear is built and installed 25 still cameras and 6 video cameras all around the 1,200 acre property this is a digital wireless camera trap and it has a infrared motion sensor that detects the body heat of an animal and when that animal passes by it triggers a picture which is then transmitted wirelessly to a base station at our facility the cameras also have an infrared flash that's imperceptible to the animals and that batteries are all solar powered we're really reducing the amount of disturbance in the landscape that would affect animal behavior and so the animals are able to act more naturally the photos and videos collected from Jasper Ridge give researchers baseline data for the local animal population which sometimes can yield surprises when we started seeing basically weekly pictures of mountain lions at certain times of year we were pretty amazed recently incredible camera trapping footage has emerged from around the world showing off rare or hard to observe species like these elusive cross river gorillas from cameroon playful tiger cubs from Sumatra a rhino from Borneo and a Wolverine from Northern California this was the first time I documented documented proof of Wolverine since I think the 1920s Sierra Pacific Industries rotates its 100 cameras over 750,000 acres of timberland to keep an eye on local species spotting the rare carnivore was a fluke really Wolverine isn't even in your reality so you're really not even thinking that I hope I get a Wolverine and that you know this set of pictures that was pretty exciting The Wolverine nickname buddy has been photographed over five consecutive winters giving biologists a chance to make sure he's healthy and to spot any potential offspring that's always the mantra buddy and from everyone is to find buddy a girlfriend hopefully one day she too will be captured on film in San Francisco I'm Kara Tsuboi cnet.com for CBS News