Bull elephant behavior is preserved on video

The Birmingham Zoo (Birmingham, AL, USA) has deployed high-resolution cameras from Mobotix (Langmeil, Germany) throughout its facility, including high-traffic areas and point-of-sale locations.

The zoo, which partnered with Advanced Integration Systems (Homewood, AL, USA) for the project, installed a comprehensive Mobotix surveillance system to investigate incidents of theft, locate lost children and deter crime while also serving to collect data on the social behavior of specific animals.

More than 30 Mobotix cameras cover critical areas including the parking lot and the facility’s primary exits and entrances. A dozen of the cameras, which are a mixture of M12, M24 and Q24 cameras, also cover the zoo’s “Trails of Africa” exhibit to allow animal researchers to gather and preserve information on the social behavior of the zoo’s African bull elephants.

“We want to have a record of the elephants’ introduction to each other and their overall behavior, and want to use the footage for scientific research. Using video as a way to preserve the activity of the animals allows our team to gather the data that we need,” says Dan Trausch, Director of Operations at Birmingham Zoo.

Unlike other systems, the decentralized Mobotix cameras incorporate a computer to reduce network bandwidth. A PC and a video control center serve only for viewing and controlling the cameras.

-- by Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design