We arrived in Mpala
on Sunday afternoon and immediately began unpacking gear. Our goal on this project is to deploy our new
wildlife collars on male African lions.
Here I am holding a lioness collar in my right hand and a male lion
collar in my left. The first thing to
notice is the SIZE of these collars!
Think about how big the neck of your pet cat is and the size of its tiny
collar. Now look at the collars in my
hands! That is the NECK SIZE of a female
and male African lion- now you know why they can eat massive chunks of meat
from a zebra or wildebeest. These are
really big carnivores!
The top portion of
the collar has a GPS unit and a VHF transmitter so that we can track where the
lions go. It also contains a 3-D
accelerometer unit that we have calibrated to tell us their behavior (i.e.
resting, walking, running, pouncing and killing or eating) and how many
calories they expend to do these activities.
Think of the collars as a Fitbit or iwatch for wild lions. The bottom portion of the collar has
batteries and a release device so we can retrieve the collars when the study is
completed next year. My colleagues (Drs.
Chis Wilmers and Gabriel Elkaim) and I developed these highly specialized
collars at the University of California Santa Cruz. This is the first time that they are being
used on African lions. Very exciting!
Now you all should be
asking yourselves the same thing- just how do you put a collar on a wild Africa lion?
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