Last week I posted an animated GIF of hourly carnivore sightings. To clarify, the map showed patterns of temporal activity across all days over the last 3 years — so the map at 9am shows sites where lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas like to be in general at that time of day (not on any one specific day).

These maps here actually show where the carnivores are on consecutive days and months (the dates are printed across the top). [For whatever reason, the embedded .GIFs hate me; click on the map to open in a new tab and see the animation!]

Keep in mind that in the early days (June-Sept 2010) we didn’t have a whole lot of cameras on the ground, and that the cameras were taken down from Nov 2010-Feb 2011 (so that’s why those maps are empty).

Carnivores captured on any given day across the study area

The day-by-day map is pretty sparse, and in fact looks pretty random. The take-home message for this is that lions, hyenas, cheetahs, and leopards are all *around*, but the chances of them walking past a camera on any given day are kinda low. I’m still trying to find a pattern in the monthly distributions below.

Carnivore captures per month

So this is what I’ve been staring at in my turkey-induced post-Thanksgiving coma. Could be worse!