QUANTIFYING THE BEHAVIOR OF FREE-LIVING ANIMALS - INTEGRATION OF BINOCULARS AND PALMTOP COMPUTER

Quantification of the time animals spend at different activities or oc cupying specific sites is often a goal of behavioral ecologists. Here we report our use of a small palmtop computer, mounted on top of a pai r of binoculars, such that the keyboard can be manipulated while the o bserver is viewing the subject. This system was designed around the He wlett-Packard HP-95LX palmtop computer. Because of its small size, thi s MS DOS based computer can be mounted on virtually any medium to larg e binocular. Event-timing and data-processing programs written in BASI C for this system were used to quantify the time animals spend at spec ific activities. This system was easy to use and the keyboard can be a ccurately manipulated while viewing a subject through the binoculars o r with the computer hanging against the operators chest by the binocul ar strap.