A group of scientists goes to a forest to study monkeys. They want to study their habits and behavior. But the most difficult problem is: how to know who's who?
In the past, scientists had to make marks on each of the animals to distinguish them. But in the future, they may have a much easier way to tell them apart thanks to the facial recognition(面部识别) technology.
A research team from China is using the technology to learn about thousands of monkeys that live in Shaanxi Province. The technology that is used for monkeys needs every monkey's special to create a database (数据库), Xinhua reported.
"When the technology is fully developed, we can connect it with our cameras set up in the mountains. The computer will record every monkey, including their names and their behavior," said Zhang He, a member of the research team.
"For each monkey, we have 800 pictures, and we can make sure that 94 percent of the recognition is right," Zhang added. "Compared with facial recognition technology for humans, the technology for monkeys is more difficult because monkeys have hairy faces. The reason makes it harder for computers to do the job. "
"Monkeys do not work with scientists in the same way as humans do. It is difficult to take perfect pictures and videos of them, which is also a big problem for us," said Li Baoguo, the leader of the research team.
Now, there are about 4,000 monkeys living in Shaanxi Province. The team's challenge is to successfully record every monkey that lives there.
