Add "interacts with camera" field

[Tim-Hofmeester]

For projects estimating density using unmarked methods (such as REM and CT-DS) as well as any project looking into animal behaviour using camera traps, it is important to be able to select any sequence/observation where the animal is interacting with the camera. As these sequences show 'unnatural' behaviour they are usually excluded from analyses. But currently it is very difficult to identify these observations/sequences using camtrap DP.

Therefore I suggest to add a bolean field 'Animal interacts with camera' to easily be able to filter out observations where the animal(s) interact with the camera trap.

I'm interested to read/hear what others think about this.

[peterdesmet]

Thanks @Tim-Hofmeester. Note that right now, you can express this as a value of your choosing (e.g. animal_interaction:with_camera) in observationTags.

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I'm interested to read/hear what others think about this.

My too, though I find the use case very specific for its own term. It might work better in a broader term to indicate "outlier" records that should preferably not be used in analysis.

[Tim-Hofmeester]

@peterdesmet thanks for the quick response. We currently address this with a specific observationTags / custom classification field, but think there is a broad use case for this (at least within the community using unmarked density estimation or studying behaviour using CTs). I see your point about "outlier" records that should not be used in analysis, but this is very dependent on the type of analysis. It is no issue if an animal interacts with the camera in an occupancy model for example. But I do also see your point that even though it might be a broader issue, it is still relatively niche. So curious to read if anyone else has this issue, otherwise we'll just keep on using our own custom field stored in observationTags.