Marmots in the media: a modest proposal [Les marmottes dans les médias: une proposition modeste].

Résumé

As we all know, naturalistic experience is much more than the one gathered by TV watching, because it involves kinesthetic, and full sensorial stimuli, including thermal, mechanical, olfactory and obviously, audio/visual info. However, naturalistic movies and documentaries helped a lot in public information and in raising conservation issue. On the contrary, sophisticated video techniques, like electronic traps, or infrared video monitoring might help in adding informed knowledge to scientists. Here we proposed for open discussion some video clips and a brochure of a movie project “Marmots: the ultimate movie”. An important question to be answered is: can marmots be made “as attractive as” bears, or polar bears. Some reflexions on how a marmot species may be presented in order to be of interest for the general public, within a folk-biology view, are welcome.