Chris Lavers Engineering Lecturer Plymouth University at BRNC

This site showcases outstanding thermal wildlife imagery taken over the last 17 years at Paignton Zoo Devon, England, the Dartmoor Otter Sanctuary and Butterfly Farm, Buckfastleigh, Devon, England and others. More pages to follow in July 2017...!!!

 

Many of these images form part of an Institute of Physics sponsored Nature in a Different Light thermal exhibition seen by over 80,000 people across the South West of England 2008-2009, which has subsequently been seen in London, Leicester and elsewhere as part of 29 'science-art' exhibitions. This has built upon a unique collaboration between myself, Dr Chris Lavers (Subject Matter Expert Sensors and Telecommunications, Plymouth University at Britannia Royal Naval College), Dr Amy Plowman (Paignton Zoo Director of Research) and Mr David Fields (Otter and Butterfly Sanctuary Buckfastleigh) all based in Devon, England, sharing our expertise and insights world-wide. I have been conducting thermal imagery  generally and thermal imagery of wildlife specifically since 2002. I previously had a smaller thermal imaging exhibition at the Peter Chalk Centre in the University of Exeter, England  in 2005. The first part of thermal-web1 looks at wildlife, the second half at other applications of thermal imagery and other spectral measurements.

 

 

1. Background

 

Partnership with Paignton Zoological Park, and the Buckfast Otter Sanctuary, heat cameras demonstrates endangered and vulnerable wildlife species may be evaluated in captivity without stress at a distance (Lavers 2008), stress now recognized as a key zoological factor to minimise (McMillan, 2005). Zoological parks provide good test sites to evaluate animals from varied habitats, with technologies applicable to evaluation and management in the wild. Previous work included non-radiometric comparative visible, Near Infra Red (NIR) and heat photography, comparative wildlife imagery (Lavers 2005, 2005) and recently radiometrically calibrated cameras (Lavers 2008) detecting small temperature differences from endangered animals protected in captivity day and night, viewing animal behaviour and numbers where it would be otherwise difficult so to do. We have also used active thermography (Shepard, 2008) Thermography offers safety advantages to zoo staff and researchers.

 

2. Methodology

In Zoo studies small temperature differences of animals against their background and across the animal itself are easily detected if the animal skin heat properties (the emissivity) is different to its background or from different areas of: skin, hair, bone, tusk etc. Human skin has an emissivity of 0.98, only 2% of heat is reflected at the skin/air boundary. Many animals radiate heat well allowing skin heat detection remotely, without disturbing normal behaviour, and enabling early pregnancy detection (e.g. Beagles) without stress (Lavers, 2008) and negative testing in giraffe (2009)!

 

Peak emission wavelength lpeak, is related to Absolute Temperature T in Kelvin: lpeak =2900/T in microns. Animals near ambient temperature have peak emission in the Far Infra Red (Heat wavelengths). For most wildlife power levels are unknown. A baseline of ‘healthy’ animal parameters provides diagnostic data before discussion of ‘sick’ animals. E.g. healthy hooves have a uniform radiant ‘crown’ around them. Although traditional ‘contra-lateral’ methods for non-radiometric cameras have been used qualitatively and with success in animals (Lavers 2005, 2005) temperature data is quantitatively useful. Thermal infra red radiation cannot be seen by eye, so heat is converted to visible light using false colours to represent different temperatures, similar to satellite false colours imagery with colours chosen to maximise contrast for details otherwise missed.

Pregnant Beagle.

 
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