HOUSTON — Walk within 3 miles of downtown Houston and you'll enter a whole new world.
A handful of University of Houston biology students are running an experiment to find out about all of the wild animals in Houston.
A bobcat along the Beltway? White-tailed deer near NASA? Thanks to the work the students are putting in, the proof is in the pictures.
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"You never know what you can find," Marilyn Gil said.
They've set up motion-activated cameras to get a glimpse of opossums, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and any other animal in the wild.
UH is partnering with the Memorial Park Conservancy on the project. The data is being shared with Texas Parks and Wildlife as well as Houston Wilderness. The students are willing to share their findings with any group that will listen.
"So bobcats, we’ve seen many more of them outside Beltway 8. But one site, just inside Beltway 8, we’ve regularly seen a bobcat," biology professor Ann Cheek said.
Cheek said armadillos tend to roll around Memorial Park.
"I think the big takeaway is that we are sharing our habitat," Cheek said. "I mean, we’re here. They’re here. We gotta learn to interact."
Cheek started sending students out with cameras at the beginning of the pandemic. They're studying the "Hidden Life of Houston" as part of an international project that looks at wildlife in urban areas. They've set up 25 trail cameras strategically placed within a 30-mile radius around Houston.
"We have seen coyotes at almost every one of our sites," Cheek said.
Night vision helps them spot bobcats, which are a little more elusive. The students will check the cameras again in two weeks to find out what's walking among us in America's fourth-largest city.