AI enhances protection of endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys

A mature artificial intelligence (AI)-powered identification technology is assisting wildlife conservation efforts in species from endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys to vulnerable takins in the Qinling Mountains, known as China's gene bank of wild biology.

June is the best time to count the number of newborn golden snub-nosed monkeys which are under national first-class protection. At a Qinling Mountains national scientific observation and research station in Foping County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, researchers from the College of Life Sciences under the Northwest University have been implementing a new round of data collection for around 100 golden snub-nosed monkeys in eight families.

Based on 20 years of field observations, the research team led by Professor Guo Songtao with the College of Life Sciences under the Northwest University, developed an artificial intelligence identification technology, whose algorithm model was trained with single frames from videos of the monkeys.

"Like for this female monkey, whose name is Xiaoxiaoqing, our AI system is able to show its individual information, including its name, all its genetic information, and group structure information," Guo said.

"We have several hours of video data for each of the golden snub-nosed monkeys here. So through these videos together with image processing, we had hundreds of thousands of single frames which were used to train the algorithm model to identify each of the monkeys," said Guo.

"We are weighing the monkeys. We do this during each season," said Zhang Jinbang, a graduate student with the Northwest University's College of Life Sciences.

"We will use relevant data in later studies, including impacts on their weight by nutrition and other aspects," said another student named Liu Hongying.

The AI identification technology has also been used to observe other wild animals including takins.

As a natural boundary between the country's north and south, the Qinling Mountains, mainly in Shaanxi Province, cover more than 50,000 square kilometers and house a huge variety of plants and wild animals.

Giant pandas, golden snub-nosed monkeys, takins and crested ibises, all listed as national first-class protected species, are the four most representative species in the Qinling Mountains.