The secret life of moose : patterns of foraging and behaviour based on video collars

Abstract: To understand how moose forage in the wild, we have to study them without disturbing them then. Video cameras placed on moose are a novel method to study wild individuals without being intrusive. I analyzed video footage from four moose collars, filmed up to nine times a day and filmed from 4 to 11 months, for maximum of 4,5 minutes a day. The moose were located in Norway: Sør-Trøndelag and in Finnmark. I tested three hypotheses: 1) weather affects video quality, 2) that diet composition of moose varies across the annual seasons and 3) diet composition varies between individuals and study sites. I found that during the vegetation period the most common video limiter of the video quality was water. The video footage showed that the moose were clearly browsers during the whole year, but they increased their foraging on Betula sp. and Salix sp. during the vegetation period. I conclude that animal-borne video cameras, are able to provide moose researchers with observations of expected changes in forage patterns during a year and provide detailed data even when they record only short periods of the day. This methodology also has the potential to reveal rare and previously undescribed behaviors. My findings will help to further refine the methodology for more large-scale investigations of the secret lives of moose.