Wild Pet Science

Children are often strong supporters of wildlife conservation, but also have pets of their own. The goal of this project is to help them engage with the science of wildlife tracking (via public data sources such as movebank.org), comparing that data to monitoring information that they collect themselves. Although Movebank uses GPS, sonar and other expensive techniques, you could use simple image analysis from a Raspberry Pi time-lapse camera to identify the position of a goldfish, a guinea pig or a hamster in its cage. Children should be able to use the data they collect to make comparisons between their own pets and wild animals - this might include foraging behaviour, "migrations" or seasonal variation in activity.