A beautiful black bear has recently gone viral after it stumbled upon a trail camera that the city of Boulder, Colorado in the United States uses to monitor wildlife across open space. Of the 580 photos captured on this particular camera in late 2022, 400 were actually bear "selfies".
Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) posted some of the bear images on Twitter and the surprise selfie star soon got shared. The unintended black-and-white selfies have captured the hearts of news outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
This photogenic bear appears to pause and pose in front of the trail camera, which came to life when the animal stepped in front of it. "At night, the cameras use infrared light to create photographs that minimize disturbances to nocturnal wildlife," OSMP says.
OSMP explains that it has nine wildlife cameras overall, covering 46,000 acres of land, and each camera helps the department to learn the behavior and whereabouts of the local wildlife species – without having to rely on staff to enter sensitive wildlife habitats, or disturbing the animals within them.
Remote trail cameras are one of the best ways to keep track of animals that would otherwise be too shy or difficult to capture using a normal camera for wildlife photography. Many nature photographers and organizations around the world use motion-activated cellular trail cameras to see what species are in a particular location, but usually, animals don't know that they're there.
"Wildlife cameras help us learn what animals are out there and what they're up to over the course of a day, a week, or even years. And sometimes, that means taking a bunch of selfies, just like us. Usually, animals just walk past our wildlife cameras, but this bear took the opportunity to take some selfies with it," adds the city's website.
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