Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference

Monitoring devices are used extensively for wildlife applications including tracking, home-range identification, and facili­tating the recapture of animals. In the spring of 2021, Apple Inc., began marketing the AirTag™. This small device costing $20.00 - $25.00 can be attached to items and located remotely using iPhones. While Apple Inc. indicates the AirTag™ is not intended for use on pets, there may be applications for monitoring animals. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential use of AirTags for animal tracking purposes on a college campus with urban and suburban-type environments. Initially, human subjects carried individ­ual AirTags (n=40) to 10 designated locations (n=40) within the 50-ha study area to simulate live tracking of individual devices. The actual location of the device compared to the location indicated on a stationary iPhone were recorded. In the second phase of the study, parameters related to the recovery of stationary devices (n=40) placed at randomly selected locations in the study area were collected. Finally, AirTags (n=4) were attached to domestic sheep via a collar in a more remote region of the campus to evaluate monitoring potential. Actual location of AirTags at designated sites compared to the location indicated on an iPhone varied from .09 ha - 5.4ha area. Recovery of AirTags hidden at various locations within the 50-ha area, took longer (p < 0.05) when using the iPhone visual locating method alone (78.4 ± 3.91 min) compared to using the visual display and an audio transmission from the AirTag™ (43.0 ± 1.21 min). Utilization of the AirTag™ to monitor free-ranging sheep in the more rural location was not effective. Results of this study suggest the use of Apple AirTag™ has some utility for monitoring animals remotely under certain physical and environ­mental conditions.