Crocodile Maps

The Franklin Eco-laboratory at the University of Queensland has electronically tagged a number of crocodiles. The tags allow the laboratory to monitor the location of crocodiles in real-time and to study the range and movements of the animals in the wild.

The laboratory's Crocodile Tracks website includes five interactive map showing the tracks of five different crocodiles. Using the maps you can observe the surprisingly large range of each of the five crocodiles over a period of time.

Unfortunately the maps don't include a scale. Without a map scale it is quite hard to get a sense of how far an individual crocodile has traveled. I think the maps would also benefit from a timeline. You can click on the individual tracking points on a map to view the time and date of the location tracked. It would be easier however to judge the passage of time if you could load each point consecutively using a timeline.

My final problem with the map is the choice of color for the tracking polylines. The white location tracks work well on the satellite map but become almost invisible if you switch to the OSM map layer.

If you like these crocodile maps then you might enjoy these other animal tracking maps.