Citizen science: Roadkill

[creadinger]

As cyclists we travel hundreds to thousands of miles of roads and each year and see (while trying to avoid hitting AGAIN) all sorts of roadkill. The fresh, bloody messes, the bloated ones, flat as paper kind, the nothing left but fur and bones kind…. If you ride with a smart phone there is an app where you can collect roadkill data and help scientists determine whether there are pattens in animal movements, what those patterns might be, and why. I first heard this on NPR.
http://epicollectserver.appspot.com/project.html?name=RoadkillGarneau

OR

If you prefer photographing LIVE animals, then this website is pretty cool. So far I’ve uploaded pictures of Chilean birds, a local turtle, and a Delawarean snake. I asked for identification help and people were REALLY eager to help with that.
http://www.inaturalist.org/

My uploads… I haven’t done any for a while, but it is fun to look for other people’s obs as well as upload your own. I imagine that there’s a cool project for a kid in here somewhere.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/chris5

Topic

[Terpfan]

For a few weeks this fall, I could have uploaded a photo of a new dead field mouse each day. Otherwise, nothing interesting on MVT except the occassional snake (or underwear in trees last winter).

[mstone]

@Terpfan 38287 wrote:

For a few weeks this fall, I could have uploaded a photo of a new dead field mouse each day. Otherwise, nothing interesting on MVT except the occassional snake (or underwear in trees last winter).

There is some underwear on the side of the W&OD out near Reston. My heart goes out to whoever had the explosive digestive issue, but was a trash can really not an option? I’m not sure if that counts as “interesting” or just “things I’d rather not see”.

[creadinger]

I think discarded underwear fits into the column of things the researchers do not want to see. As gross as road kill is, if you take a picture of underwear, you are saving that image for nobody, but yourself.

[Author]

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