Face to save lemurs

antananarivo - US researchers have used facial recognition software to distinguish from each other lemurs. The Madagascar living prosimians prove very well recognized by the computer. In one test, 98.7 percent of the animals successfully recognized by the program LemurFaceID, the scientists write in the journal BMC Zoology.

For the recognition of the various animals will now be still mainly based on other characteristics, such as body size, eye-catching color patterns, or, for example, scars. However, they also seem to all have a different face. The researchers applied facial recognition software for people to recognize the faces. Thus the influence of facial hair has been limited and the software also had to learn to deal with changing natural lighting.

Lemurs are endangered species. By using computers with the software, the animals can be studied longer and can therefore be learned more about how to protect the animals. With some adjustments to make the software suitable for research on other animals such as monkeys and bears, the researchers expected.