Animal selfies!

In Cave Creek Regional Park, a park ranger named Mark Paulat set up a camera near a water basin because the water level was significantly decreasing and he wanted to know why. The water basin was home to a desert tortoise named Piccolo. Cave Creek Regional Park is within the Sonoran Desert, a historically dry and hot area with diverse wildlife. Many of these animals came from significant distances because they can smell the water in a pretty wide range. On the recordings, Paulat found animals ranging from rabbits to bobcats to owls and posted the videos on the park's Facebook page. He hoped those videos would encourage those that live near by to visit the park and those who maybe live farther away to explore outdoors more and experience nature themselves and not just through a computer screen. Paulat posts the videos along with a few factoids about the different animals pictured and some of the animals even take "selfies" as they inspect the camera, like this fawn. 

I think it's absolutely amazing how such a simple thing attracts so much attention. Animals visiting a water basin in the middle of a desert is not an uncommon occurrence, but so many diverse species caught on film drinking out of the same watering hole is insane. It's also interesting to see how the different animals drink. One of the animals that visited the water basin was an owl named "The Queen" who simply stood right in the water and bent down to drink, unlike a coyote who looked around cautiously and then began to drink that one would expect a dog to. The pictures of the animals are definitely worth the look, you may see something that you can declare as your new favourite animal. 




Sanders, R. L. (2017, June 18). Animal selfies: Hidden camera captures desert animals hamming it up. Retrieved June 19, 2017, from http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-science/2017/06/18/animal-selfies-hidden-camera-captures-desert-animals-hamming-up/390872001/