Institute For The Future

Sea otters are watching you!

 

Not a trend for the future of video, but an interesting moment for some photographers in Monterey Bay who had the camera turned on them for a change. And it wasn't another person behind the lens—it was an otter who'd gotten a hold of someone's discarded video camera floating in the bay.

 

From InsideBayArea.com:

The screen on Aguirre's digital camera soon confirmed what he'd seen: an otter floating on its back, video camera grasped in its paws, lens aimed at the boat of excited photographers. The humans had a bad angle, but Aguirre managed to snap a single clear shot before the otter dived, video camera in tow.

 

"He's the only one who got the photo," Gideon said.

 

Judging by the rust and seaweed adorning the camera, the otter probably wasn't getting much good footage. But Aguirre, who has photographed animals all over the world for more than a decade, said the otter aiming a camcorder was the "craziest" thing he's seen an animal do in the wild.

In my Blended Reality presentation on Sentient World (PPT available here, report to come) I talked about how we can give presence to animals, plants and inanimate objects around us by equipping them with sensors that allow them to communicate using common human protocols. This is not an example of a sensor-equipped, wired otter, but it is interesting how the image of an otter spotted with a piece of "human" technology has an anthropomorphizing effect.

 

If you do want to see some sensor-tagged animal data, check out TOPP: Tagging of Pacific Predators.