ATS has even made collars that measure 8.5 feet in circumference for elephants. The transmitter's smaller than a pencil eraser and is strapped to the fish's back with a tiny piece of plastic tubing. Fitting freshwater fish with transmitters makes up about half of ATS' business. Animals and birds make up the other half. But there's also a small percentage of miscellaneous uses, including rocks and trees.
Companies track rocks around bridge footings to study the effects of flooding.
And foresters use transmitters to help them find tree samples in parts of a forest that could be miles off the road and difficult to find. We found out those squirrels get to be four feet long. Tracking technology has come a long way since 1968, when, as a graduate student assistant at the U, Huempfner worked on a project that involved tracking waterfowl using leg bands. That same year, he met Kuechle, a 1964 electrical engineering grad who was directing radio tracking studies at CBS' Cedar Creek Natural History Area. Kuechle had immersed himself in developing the technology for radio tracking devices.