Facial recognition software's unique use in sea dragon conservation

January 13, 2023 7:58 PM

Facial recognition software's unique use in sea dragon conservation. Known for their leaf-like appendages, the seahorse-like creatures found along the Australian coastline can be identified by the markings on their faces and along their chiselled snouts.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (6 comments total)

OK so this is super cool.
posted by Zumbador at 10:26 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Neat! There are so many slimy/exploitative applications of this kind of tech, it's always nice to hear of the rare wholesome usage.

Sheep have apparently unique faces, insofar as sheep can recognize many individual sheep faces (and many human faces). Sure enough, there's plans in the works to have sheep farmers use computer sheep face recognition instead of ear tags.

Social wasps also have uniquely identifiable faces, but I'm not sure (yet) how computer-based wasp recognition would be useful...
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:32 AM on January 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is amazing.
posted by OrangeDisk at 7:42 AM on January 14, 2023

This is so cool, thank you for sharing!

Another organization employing image analysis for conservation is WildMe , which has multiple projects including FlukeBook and the Zebra Codex.
posted by esker at 8:25 AM on January 14, 2023

Of all the fish in the sea, seadragons present the most bespoke visages unimaginable. I can see why facial recognition software is needed. Plus this is crowd sourced for the imagery. How cool that is.
posted by y2karl at 11:36 AM on January 14, 2023

Just love this, time to take a deep-dive into these kinds of initiatives and see if there are any that are easily contributed to.
posted by Ravneson at 1:57 AM on January 15, 2023