Animal ID Learning Materials

Animal ID How animals’ unique features help scientists tell individual creatures apart SEPTEMBER 21, 2020 By Isobel Whitcomb JUSTIN LO/GETTY IMAGES WILD LEMURS: Ring-tailed lemurs are critically endangered, with only about 2,400 left in the wild. AS YOU READ, THINK ABOUT why scientists need to distinguish between animals of the same species. Ringtailed lemurs leap through the forest treetops on Madagascar, an island off Africa’s east coast. They shaped faces make these lemurs hard to tell apart. To track a population of animals like lemurs, scientists normally have to capture them one by one. T ckers under their skin. They might also fit the animals with GPS collars. The tagging process can be Some scientists are looking into a less stressful way to identify animals. They’d like to use biometrics . These measurements of physical features are unique to each animal. Each person on Earth has a dif Play Video Play Mute Loaded: 6.11% Remaining Time -2:42 Captions Picture-in-PictureFullscreen Wildbook Watch a video about how scientists use machine learning to collect information about animals. SAY “CHEESE!” CROUSE, D., JACOBS, R.L., RICHARDSON, Z. ET AL. LEMURFACEID: A FACE RECOGNITION SYSTEM TO FACILITATE INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFICATION OF LEMURS. BMC ZOOL 2, 2 (2017) RECOGNITION SYSTEM: A computer program analyzes photos of each lemur’s face. Have you ever unlocked your phone by looking into its camera? Or have you been automatically tag facial-recognition technology . These computer programs recognize people by their facial features. The same technology works on Scientists have created a program called LemurFaceID. It finds differences in facial fur patterns in le machine learning to get better at spotting differences in features over time. The more pictures LemurFaceID studies, th NICOLAS DELOCHE/GODONG/ROBERTHARDING BARCODE: Wildbook scans images of zebras to create a unique “StripeCode.” STRIPE SPOTTER From a distance, zebras look almost identical. But in reality, none of them have exactly the same bla andwhite pattern. This fact led scientists to create Wildbook. It’s a computer program that scans pictures Wildbook works by zooming in on the tiny pixels that make up an image. It looks for places called “ “They’re like fingerprints,” says Tanya BergerWolf. She’s a computer scientist at the Ohio State University who cofounded the Wildbook project. Growing numbers of people and livestock have caused zebras’ grassland habitat to shrink. Identifyin COURTESY OF NEBRASKA EXTENSION IN LANCASTER COUNTY SINGULAR SCHNOZ: Each cow’s nose has a unique pattern of bumps and ridges. NOSE PATTERN In 1921, farmers made an interesting find. They could tell cows apart by their noseprints. Tiny ridges of-a-kind noses. But they’ve found a much easier way. Researchers at BeniSuef University in Egypt took digital photos of cows’ noses. Then they processed the pictures with a algorithm . A computer follows an algorithm to perform a specific task. Some features in the images weren’t us The software used the hightech noseprints to identify individual cows. It was correct 96 percent of the time. Scientists hope that to-date on vaccinations, and tracking illnesses that could spread through a herd. FLIP NICKLIN/MINDEN PICTURES (TOP LEFT TAIL); LUCIANO CANDISANI/MINDEN PICTURES (BOTTOM LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT TAIL); SHUTTERSTOCK.COM (TOP RIGHT TAIL) THROUGH A NEW LENS: The unique markings, scratches, and scars on the underside of a humpback whale’s fluke, or tail, help scientists identify individual whales. WHALE TALES BY WILDESTANIMAL/GETTY IMAGES LIFE STORY: Photo IDs can be used to keep track of whales, like this humpback whale, for their entire lives. Whales spend most of their time underwater, so studying them isn’t easy. Luckily, whales come up f Researchers have created large databases of whale “photo-IDs.” Many of the images come from everyday people, like whale watchers and tourists in coastal areas. Scientists use the images to estimate whales’ numbers and track their movements. If there aren’t any recent images of an individual, the whale may have died. That helps researchers figure out death rates within a population. Photo-IDs also tell researchers more about whale pods. They show how these family groups are organized and the relationships of their members. “Each individual whale has its own personality, history, and family,” says Hal Whitehead, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada. “Without being able to recognize the individuals, we would have very little concept of their lives.”