Videos from an animal's perspective
The Museum of Animal Perspectives sticks cameras on the heads of animals and uploads the resulting videos to Flickr. I'm fond of the armadillocam, but wolfcam and cowcam are pretty cool too. Ooh! Pigcam! Goatcam! Cow licking own rearcam!
the latest
latest episodes
DIRT: It's what's for dinner.
And really - how many folks were disappointed when the scorpion didn't kill anything or at least mutter: GET OVER HERE!
FOCUS!!!!
The scorpion one is cool but the pig one almost makes me not love bacon.
Y'know, I never thought about a scorpion's walk would sound so neat.
Interesting but a bit misleading. It doesn't tell us anything about the animal's true perspective, that is, what it is looking at and in what context, or how its vision is complimented by other senses. Also, the cam seems to be focused on the animal and not the foreground.
Scorpions are one of the few animals that really, genuinely creep me out... but after watching this, I have to admit that becoming really tiny and riding one as though it were a horse would be totally awesome.
Really cool... yet I wish there was a "snake cam," and for instance, it was near a lake-- then I'd finally understand what Jim Morrison was going on about.
Hanglyman, yeah, awesome ... apart from the giant pointy death-stinger pointed at the back of your head.
Think it through, man!
Many of these videos were recently exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. The artist's name is Sam Easterson, and he gave a lecture at the exhibition opening that was quite interesting, and he was very personable.
Didn't the Kratt Brothers do this on one of their kids' shows about a decade ago?
Antonio, exactly.
BatCam™ must operate via sonar and ScopCam™ by sensing vibrations through the ground, otherwise we're not getting the true picture.
PS. I wonder, if bats could breathe sulphur hexafluoride or helium and report their experiences, what would they think was going on?
It's probably the equivalent of LSD for them. Did Nagel or the CIA ever try that?
Hanglyman: until you fell off and it ate you, anyway.
Mmm, person. Nom nom nom.
MAP is curated by my old classmate Sam Easterson - Cooper Union alumnus. He did some absolutely bang-up genius work back then at school. I remember he video recorded himself slowly dismantling the camera which was recording the act in a mirror. It was really jarring and absolutely mesmerizing - all the way up to the moment the camera died -- wires and crap hanging out of it. I felt this immense sense of sorrow for the camera - VHS-C no less! His current MAP work is totally awesome. I like to refer to MAP as "Extreme Animal Empathy."
mr. bluejay seems none too happy about camera-wielding scorpion!
For years I've wanted a video game that did this -- like Wart in the Once and Future King when Merlin turns him into an ant or fish ot whatever to learn about those cultures.
Wouldn't it be cool to travel around and BE in the animal for a while? I'd love it. Until I got eaten or stepped on, I suppose.
Are those X-Wing or Tie Fighters attacking the scorpion? I can't remember which is which.
For a video (where videos usually emphasize the visual element), the sounds are my favorite part. I definitely like the perspective, and the super-shallow depth of field is pretty interesting, but the sounds are amazing.
The scorpion is great, and so is the tarantula.
For a truly surreal experience, I recommend watching the wolf videos while listening to the audio of the ham radio trolls talking about torture. Who knew?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbenjamin/
Cooper the Photographer cat is light-heartedly anthropomorphizing by his owners, but it is kind of cool to see the photos they put together from his adventures with his "cat cam." It's not so much interesting as it makes me want one for my cat! And yes, there is a guy who makes custom cat cams:
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/
#15 Unanimous Cowherd:
There's a game for the Wii that you might be interested in called Deadly Creatures.
I hope I'm not the only one who loved the armadillo and wolf videos. Getting a glimpse of foraging behavior is really awesome.
Though animal rights-conscious individuals may balk at the prospect of fixing animals great and small with cameras and setting them loose, I'd like to think that such a treatment actually drives their point home more carefully and completely than any awareness campaign - that animals are real individuals with real lives.
This is clearly an invasion of the animals' privacy. I am appalled and horrified. These animals are innocent until proven guilty! They don't deserve this unwarranted surveillance!
These are wonderful!
Where's the monkeycam? The technology's been out there.
In the mid 80's Letterman was already up to monkey cam 2.
#5 Good point, Antonio:
"Interesting but a bit misleading. It doesn't tell us anything about the animal's true perspective.."
I propose a second view -- one that shows the image scaled to the proportion the size of the animal's visual cortex. A list of other senses and their relative contributions would be good,too.
Oh! I hear someone at the door. Gotta go.. ;)
Scorpian cam needs to have it's focus set a wee bit past the bugger's cephalothorax.
This is just great - we had to share it with our readers. Did you guys see it Anderson Cooper last night? It looks like CNN gets it scoops from digg!