My Husband’s Stink

Recently, Seattle’s King5 Evening program came to Woodland Park Zoo to film Robert and me talking about our automated scent dispenser. You can watch the clip here and see the scent dispenser in action for yourself. Just be glad that you can’t smell it.

My husband is a tinkerer, just like his dad (a retired jet mechanic), his uncle (designer of the module descent engine for the first lunar lander), and a few other master problem solvers who happen to share his genes (including his mom and sister, both jigsaw puzzle experts!) So when Robert set his mind to creating a new tool for attracting wildlife to motion-triggered cameras for many months at a stretch, I knew it was just a matter of time.

Over the past several years, Robert has been perfecting the automated scent dispenser that he co-developed with an engineer at Microsoft Research and a fellow biologist with Idaho Fish and Game. The dispenser was a tech-driven answer to a much earthier question: how could we draw wolverines to our remote cameras over the winter without having to periodically rebait them with fresh meat and scent lures?

Picture an IV bag-type set-up that emits a tiny amount of super stinky liquid on a daily basis with the help of 8 lithium AA batteries, and now imagine stuffing this spiffy package into a sturdy (bear-proof) tube that can easily be secured to a tree. Voila! The automated scent dispenser has made a huge difference in our research with wolverines and in numerous other studies, too. What’s next? No spoilers here, but the tinkering never stops.

Photo: Courtesy BC Parks