ABSTRACT
A desire to know the secret lives of wild animals has innovated surveillance technologies in the twenty-first century. From drones, remote-controlled spy cameras, go-pros and sensors to trail cams, humans can now keep an eye on the wild and enrol wildlife into the Internet of Things. In this chapter, I examine the capacities of surveillance technology to empower, subjugate, individualise, massify, emancipate or control wild animals in the so-called Digital Anthropocene. I consider how different vantage points for recording – specific devices and outputs that capture different aspects of animal lives – impact animal agency, privacy and welfare. Which features of their lives do they capture and which do they omit? To what extent do different surveillance technologies facilitate perspective-taking? While several technologies fall short of directly empowering animals, I show that they may provide sharper representations of their sensory lifeworlds (umwelts) and promote more convivial ways of living better with wild animals.
