The Boston Globe - 30.08.2019

B2 Metro The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019

By Alyssa Lukpat

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

H

ollie Sutherland followed hyenas in

South Africa and helped preserve plants

for the British government, but she

came to conclude that the images cap-

tured on the trail camera in the back-

yard of her Western Massachusetts town were every

bit as interesting.

“[My camera] got everything from huge bull

moose, to bears, to bobcats, to fisher, to courting por-

cupines. It feels like Christmas every time you go out

and check your camera and see what you might have

been sharing your yard with,” said Sutherland of her

Wendell home.

Now, Sutherland, a graduate student at the Uni-

versity of Massachusetts Amherst, studies biodiver-

sity monitoring. She wants people in Massachusetts

to install their own trail cameras and report wildlife

sightings to the state. “This data could be used to de-

tect the presence of certain species, to estimate the

abundance of species with individually identifiable

markings, and to record animal behavior,” Sutherland

said.

Trail cameras are triggered by motion detectors

and can patiently monitor wild animal sightings in

the woods — or in one’s backyard where animals that

once nearly disappeared from Massachusetts have re-

turned in large numbers. Coyotes, foxes, bald eagles,

fishers, and deer are now found in Boston and across

the state in cities, towns, and villages.

The cameras can even help people see which of the

resurgent species is digging through their trash. A

fisher? A racoon? A coyote? The camera may provide

the answer.

“When an animal walks past the camera, it trig-

gers the sensor, which then tells the camera to take a

photo or a video. The cameras are usually battery op-

erated and can monitor wildlife remotely,” Sutherland

said.

The cameras are usually slightly bigger than a

large smartphone. The devices are surging in popu-

larity as the cost of their technology drops, said Mari-

on Larson, the chief of information and education at

the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

“Not very long ago, trail cameras were not terribly

available or as inexpensive as they are now. So people

are discovering wildlife in their backyard they didn’t

realize was there, but now you have photographic evi-

dence. It’s kind of a way to find out who your wild

neighbors are,” Larson said.

MassWildlife accepts animal sighting reports and

pictures by e-mail, phone, or post. People can submit

photos for scientists to identify what species they saw,

said Troy Gipps, a publications manager and editor of

MassWildlife’s magazine. This information helps sci-

entists improve their conservation efforts.

Hunters were some of the first to use trail cameras

for monitoring game, Sutherland said. The cameras

went mainstream in the 1980s as manufacturers

started mass-producing the devices, Sutherland said.

Scientists began monitoring animals with trail cam-

eras in the 1990s, and wildlife enthusiasts today are

adopting the cameras to track animals in their yards.

One camera fan is the The Trustees of Reserva-

tions, a 128-year-old state conservation organization.

Sally Naser, a conservation restriction program man-

ager for the organization, shared a few tips from her

years running a trail camera Facebook page.

She said trail camera buyers should pay attention

to trigger speed and recovery time. But they should

know that high megapixels don’t always translate to

superior image quality, Naser said. She suggested

buying a camera box to protect the device from bears.

Animal watchers can even make their own trail cam-

eras.

“Some people ask me for feedback and say they’ll

get crappy photos. If you spend $50, you’ll get a $

camera. If you spend $100 or $150, you’ll get a better

camera,” Naser said.

Naser has two favorite trail cameras: the Reconyx

UltraFire, which costs about $600, and the Bushnell

Essential E3 for $75.

Sutherland said she has learned more about her

environment by studying not just the images, but

when they were taken.

“Because images are time-stamped, you can be

surprised by how close you were to an animal,” she

said. “I used to walk my dog past my camera and I

would be surprised to see images and videos of me

and my dog — and then shortly afterwards a deer or a

fox would be captured on the camera.”

Alyssa Lukpat can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow her on Twitter

@AlyssaLukpat.

Backyard visitors caught on camera

PHOTOS BY SALLY NASER

A GREAT BLUE HERONsnacked on a frog. The animals shown here were caught on a trail camera in Western Massachusetts.

AROUND THE REGION

LAWRENCE

Workerscuttingmetal

sparkthree-alarmfire

Workers cutting metal for a fire escape sparked a

three-alarm fire that destroyed a three-family

home at 274 Haverhill St. that displaced 12 peo-

ple, Massachusetts State Fire Marshal Peter J.

Ostroskey’s office said Thursday. State Police,

Lawrence police and firefighters, and Ostroskey’s

office investigated, the statement said. The fire

ignited the house around 10 a.m. Wednesday, ac-

cording to Lawrence firefighters and the state-

ment. The home, which was sold just two days

before, had about $408,000 in damage, officials

said. “The previous owner had a building permit

to replace the rear stairs. No application for a hot

works permit had been received by the Fire De-

partment. The new owner should have applied

for a new building permit,” Ostroskey said. Two

firefighters sustained minor injuries in the blaze,

the statement said.

WORCESTER

D-Daytourpromoter

chargedwithstealing

A Massachusetts tour promoter charged with

keeping as much as $59,000 paid by a dozen peo-

ple for trips to World War II battle sites that nev-

er happened could face several trials. Prosecutors

Wednesday asked a judge to schedule three or

four trials for 52-year-old John Powers of

Grafton, citing the ‘‘financial burden’’ of bringing

the alleged victims, all from out of state, to Mas-

sachusetts at the same time. Prosecutors say

many of them paid for a 2014 trip to France to

mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Powers fac-

es 12 counts of larceny at one trial scheduled for

Sept. 23. He pleaded not guilty. (AP)

MALDEN

Manfoundguiltyin

slayingofgirlfriend

Ryan Power, 34 was sentenced to life in prison

Thursday after a Middlesex Superior Court jury

found him guilty of fatally strangling his former

girlfriend with a dog leash while their two young

children were at home, officials said. Power, of

Malden, was convicted of first degree murder for

the death of Leah Penny, 32, at her apartment on

Lebanon Street on June 21, 2017, the Middlesex

district attorney’s office said. Power was later ar-

rested in Seabrook, N.H., and charged as a fugi-

tive from justice. Penny’s body was found at the

bottom of a staircase with a dog leash wrapped

around her neck and a vodka bottle underneath

her at 9:49 a.m., prosecutors said. Investigators

discovered that Power had placed the vodka bot-

tle underneath her body in an effort to make it

look like her death was accidental or committed

by another person, according to the release. The

couple’s two children, ages 1-year-old and 2-

years-old, and a dog were found unharmed in-

side the home, prosecutors said.

GET SMART

By Martin Finucane
GLOBE STAFF
Imagine that a time machine transports
you back 1,500 years to a forest road in what
is now Croatia. You get up, dust yourself off,
and look around. You’re in the Early Middle
Ages.
A local inhabitant approaches you, and you
see something you didn’t expect. You’re im-
mediately struck by the shape of their head.
It’s extremely elongated toward the back, re-
sulting in an egg shape.
As a curious crowd gathers, you see that
there are other people in the crowd whose
heads are deformed in a different way. Their
foreheads have been flattened, and their
skulls have grown upward higher than nor-
mal.
Researchers, after looking at evidence
from skeletons in a mysterious burial pit
found in 2013 near the town of Osijek in east-
ern Croatia, say people who practiced artifi-
cial cranial deformation appear to have lived
in the area at the time.
But the reason they changed the shape of
their heads is still a matter of speculation.
“The impetus behind why these things
were done can’t really be deciphered by the
kind of data we have,” said Kendra Sirak, a
postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical
School in the Reich Lab of Medical and Popu-
lation Genetics. Sirak was one of the lead au-
thors on a new paper on the skeletons, which
was published last week in the journal PLOS
One.
“We think it could be some sort of visual
indicator of group membership,” she said. The
people who did it may have thought, she said,
that “it sets us apart. It makes us unique. It al-
lows us to identify other members of my same
group.”
Practiced for some 5,500 years by cultures
around the world, artificial cranial deforma-
tion involves binding the growing heads of in-
fants and children with bandages, planks,
boards, or bricks. As the skull grows under
constant pressure, it becomes misshapen, re-
sulting in oblong heads and other unusual
shapes. Anthropologists have documented
this practice on every inhabited continent, but
it isn’t common. Today it continues in only a
few remote tribes.
Skulls unearthed in the burial pit near
Osijek were the first with artificial cranial de-
formation found in Croatia.
The pit contained three sets of human
bones, as well as animal skeletons and broken
pottery. Two of the skulls were deformed, but
in different ways — one resembled an elongat-
ed egg, and the other had a flattened fore-
head, causing the cranium to grow higher.
Researchers, led by Mario Novak, an ar-
cheologist at the Institute for Anthropological
Research in Croatia and Ron Pinhasi of the
University of Vienna, examined the bones,
scanned and reconstructed the skulls, and an-
alyzed their DNA.
The findings suggested that between the
fifth and sixth centuries, during the Migration
Period, people of starkly different cultural
backgrounds may have interacted more than
previously thought. The study also provides
the earliest genetic evidence of the presence of
people from East Asia in Europe.
The Migration Period was the time in
Western European history around and after
the fall of the Roman Empire. It was marked
by frequent warfare, a virtual disappearance
of urban life, and the movement of so-called
barbarian peoples into what had been the
Western Roman Empire, according to britan-
nica.com.
The researchers found that the skulls be-
longed to three malnourished males, between
the ages of 14 and 16, who had lived between
A.D. 415 and 560. There were no signs of vio-
lent death.
DNA testing deepened the mystery. It re-
vealed the flat-foreheaded skull belonged to
someone from somewhere in the Middle East,
northern Africa, or southeastern Europe. The
egg-shaped skull belonged to someone from
East Asia. The unaltered skull likely came
from a person of West Eurasian ancestry.
Their genes were relatively unmixed, suggest-
ing they had moved from these places or their
parents had.

Material from The New York Times was used
in this report.

Mystery of the

malformed heads

PLOS ONE

The MetroMinute

BOBCAT

COYOTE

EASTERN PAINTED TURTLE

BEAR

BARRY CHIN/GLOBE STAFF

THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN— Sandy

Depina, 9, a third-grader at the Josiah

Quincy school, was all smiles after

receiving a backpack during the first

annual Back 2 School Kickoff hosted by

Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael

Rollins. Target donated about 300

backpacks filled with school supplies.