What you’ll learn:
- How a DAQ device can be used to monitor hydration rate and osmoregulation.
- Why a new chassis design was necessary to prevent injury.
- Why we have to put an explicit explanation about an April 1st article so that the search engines don’t ding us for something humorous.
As part of a joint effort with a local high school in Travis County ISD to bolster STEM learning among AP biology students, my team and I at Emerson Test & Measurement (formerly NI) worked with a class to develop an automated system to monitor the hydration rate and osmoregulation (water balance) of giraffes at the local zoo. There’s a shortage of test and measurement engineers today on top of a coming wave of retirements in the field, which makes it even more important to develop skills among the next generation of potential engineers.
Zoologists now use the more detailed hydration rate to understand how climate change is impacting the breakdown of how much water giraffes ingest from their food supply vs. direct consumption from rivers and ponds. Or in this case, the trough in their habitat.
Drinky McMonitorface
The monitoring system—nicknamed “Drinky McMonitorface” by the students—triggers when giraffes step in front of an optical sensor to enter the paddock to drink from the trough. It logs the simple RFID tags on the giraffes from a small “wristband” around their legs and records a timestamp for correlation with video monitors. The system uses load cells installed under the trough to calculate the volume of water consumed per visit.
More April 1st Mayhem
To facilitate placement in the enclosures, we created a camo version of our latest USB DAQ device, mioDAQ. Though the camo version wasn’t originally used in the research test bed, the students found that they needed to conceal the bright white instrumentation because the animals found it distracting. On rare occasion, they would break the device under their hooves.
Contain the Rage with Camo
To be honest, when we first embarked on this project, we had no idea that placing electronic equipment within the confined space of an artificial habitat could spontaneously trigger such rage in the animals. One of the students was nearly trampled by one of the largest giraffes during the installation process.
As you might imagine, we got some phone calls from parents, the superintendent, and even the school board about it. That’s when we realized we needed to completely revolutionize our testing system. One of the guys on the team had been watching the 1987 action classic Predator the night before, and that’s when it hit us—camouflage!
Realizing the potential for use in other natural areas, we’ve decided to release the new camo chassis for others who may need to discreetly acquire a wide range of data in natural areas, such as beaver dams, mountain lion caves, wolf habitats, and even for use in cryptozoology research to monitor the patterns of almas, yerens, and skunk apes. The response has been overwhelming. Orders are on backorder for the next five to eight months, but if you reach out to one of our distributor reps, you might be able to get one in time to use as a stocking stuffer this Christmas.
