Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Watching Internet Animals

A while ago, Daddy Types blogged about Pete's Pond, a National Geographic "WildCam" trained on a waterhole in Botswana. It's the sort of thing I think is really cool, and mean to check out and then promptly forget about. The few times I've remembered to check out the site, it's been late at night in Botswana and not too much is visible via the RealPlayer stream.

This morning, however, I remembered it and needed a break from a particularly tortuous article so I tried to check in with Pete's Pond ... and the site was down.

In a similar vein, I received a fundraising appeal from Polar Bears International yesterday, which jogged my memory about their polar bear cam. For a moment, I was bummed out, thinking I'd once again missed my opportunity (the cam is live only for about a month each year), but I was in luck!

While the cam wasn't particularly active in the middle of the night, this afternoon, they've had a lot of shots of one bear sleeping in a snow bank and of another one walking around. The free still cam is on a 35-second refresh rate, but you can donate for access to a live video feed. It's not quite like being in Churchill, but it is warmer ...

(Of course none of these animals-in-the-wild cams should take away from the National Zoo's Panda Cam, especially since little Tai Shan is walking now ...)

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