Ring me up sometime

Not that cellphones need any more selling points, but they’re now being used to trap leopards in India that venture too close to villages.

With the increasing loss of their natural habitat to logging, farming and human population expansion, thousands of leopards are roaming the Indian countryside and coming into contact with humans more often, resulting in the deaths of both leopards and humans.

Traditionally, villagers have used goats, roosters and cows to lure leopards into traps. Now, those animals are being spared the thankless task of serving as live bait. Instead, their calls are being recorded and used as cellphone ringtones, which are played over speakers to lure the leopards into traps.

According to H.S. Singh, the chief conservation research officer in India’s Gujarat state, the trick only works at night, when the leopards can’t tell there’s no helpless animal to gobble up.

Of course, if the phones played the ringtones that we humans are subjected to walking down the street, that would probably drive the leopards away just as effectively.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Under-reported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.