By Paul White
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Although Zorro does work as a livestock guardian dog protecting our chickens, he also has a second role, protecting us when we do our camera trap work in the forest.
That said, we don't solely rely on him to protect us, we take various other precautions, one of which is to carry bear spray.
We are especially interested in filming large predators such as wolves, bears and lynx, and although we have no personal safety concerns regarding wolves and lynx, bears are a concern. We are not always on trails, and the forest and meadows where we operate have a high density of bears. It is no exaggeration when I say that we record more bears than badgers!
So when Zorro, our Sarplaninac livestock guardian dog, started to join us doing our rounds from one camera to the next, he displayed certain behaviours that sometimes caused me confusion.
However, it soon became apparent some of these behaviours were picked up on the same cameras that were set to film large predators. I could then compare what Zorro was doing in relation to previous captures of a passing bear, wolf, or lynx.
Depending on wildlife activity, we visit our camera traps (trail cameras) to change SD cards from as little as once daily to several weeks at a time. We never bait our cameras, so food is not a factor in either Zorro's behaviour or that of wildlife.
In this first example (2 videos merged together for ease of explanation) watch what direction the bear comes from when passing the camera and then see how Zorro positions himself (9 days later) when I approach the same camera
In this second example, see the alert state Zorro is in when we approach the camera. This was six hours after a wolf had passed the same camera. Note also how the wolf was 'spooked' by the infrared when the motion sensor was triggered.
In my opinion, there's some kind of intuition at play here, assisted by senses that are far more highly tuned than ours. The wolf video could simply be explained by the presence of scent, as there is only a six-hour interval. But how can the bear video be explained with a nine-day interval?
Some friends have expressed that this can also be explained by the presence of scent. But I find this hard to believe, considering the depth and quantity of snow when it passed the camera, and the nearly complete melt thereafter?
