Further Unit Experimentation and Possum Preparation

 

Recent test deployments inside outside buildings (barns) have again produced evidence of the potential for the sound lure to operate to draw animals towards a trap area.   In the example shown to the left a student from school has placed a live capture trap in a barn, with the sound lure to the left of the trap.

The brush tailed possum enters the trap, interacts with the food inside the trap, and then leaves the trap to inspect the sound lure, before again entering the trap and this time activating it.    We discussed with the student the potential of preventing this from happening by placing the sound lure adjacent to the rear of the unit, so the possum when interacting with the unit would need to spring the trap to gain access to the speaker which appears to be the target of the possums when it is presented to them.

In the second instance of recent note we have began running tests with the robotic arm.   Our first series of tests have been using the arm by itself and disconnecting the sound element.   The arm is set to operate for randomly lengths of time, when placed inside a DOC 200 it can fit althought it is tight.

Essentially it will operate in tandem with the noise and currently is operating as a feather.   The noise will set off and at the same time the motor will turn.    In the last week this has been deployed at Deployment SIte One.   There has been evidence of some interest from brush tailed possums as shown in the photo although the animals have not tried to interact diretly with the trap, they appear to be observing it from a distance but not as yet engaging with it.   We are shortly going to replace the circuit so that it will create the noise as well as the movement to note any changes or additional interactions.