AI Can Identify Large Cats Through Their Stripes

Debbie Banks, the crime campaign leader for the Environment Investigation Agency, a charity based in London, tries to determine individual large cats from their stripes.

In a town in northeastern Scotland, a Phys.org report specified, Banks is looking for clues to track down criminals as she browses through a database of tiger skins. Thousands of images are available on the said database, including carcasses, rugs, and taxidermy specimens.

Once a tiger has been identified, an investigator can already pinpoint where it has originated from. In a report from AFP, Banks said a tiger's stripes are "as unique as human fingerprints."

She also said that one could use the images to cross-reference against photos of captive tigers that might have been farmed. At present, the same report said, this is slow, meticulous work.

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(Photo: NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images)
An Environmental Investigation Agency official said individual large cats could be determined from their stripes using artificial intelligence.

Identifying Stripes Through Artificial Intelligence

A new artificial intelligence too, nonetheless, which is being developed by The Alan Turing Institute, a center in the United Kingdom for data science and artificial intelligence, should make things easier for Banks and law enforcement officials

But a new artificial intelligence tool being developed by The Alan Turing Institute, a center in the UK for data science and artificial intelligence, should make life much easier for Banks and law enforcement officials.

Such a project aims to create and test AI technology that can examine a tiger's stripes to identify them.

Banks explained that there is a database of images of tigers that have been offered for sale or have been sized. When the investigators are getting new images, there's a need to scan those against the database.

Cross-Referencing Manually

Currently, that's being done manually; she elaborated by looking at the individual stripe patterns of every new image they get and cross-referencing it against those in the database.

According to The Star, it is hoped that this new technology will help law enforcement agencies identify where tiger skins are coming from and enable them to examine the transnational networks involved in trafficking tigers.

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Once officials know the confiscated tiger's skins and products, they can determine whether the animal was farmed or poached from a protected site.

Poaching, fueled by consumer demand, stays a major threat to the species' survival, according to the EIA. Essentially, tiger skins and body parts are sought after, partly because of their use in traditional Chinese medicine.

An approximated 4,500 tigers stay in the wild throughout Asia. As specified in the AFP report via MSN, tigers experienced a massive drop in population during the past 120 years. Therefore, they in the organization want to do everything they can to help end the trade in their parts and products, including tiger skins.

Stripe Patterns

Encouraging the public, Banks said anyone with images of tigers is invited to submit them to the EIA so they can help strengthen the AI database.

She said they are inviting people, whether they are researchers and academics, or photographers, who may have photos of tigers where their stripe patterns are clear.

She added these animals could be live or dead tigers or tiger parts. If they can share those with the organization, the data researchers can then develop, train, and test the AI technology.

Related information about the stripes in tigers is shown on Facts Factory's YouTube video below: