China creates facial recognition app – for pandas

Researchers build database of 120,000 images and 10,000 video clips to help them correctly identify individual animals

Software will help scientists gather data on wild pandas, who live deep in the mountains and are hard to track

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Giant male panda Xiao Liwu eats some bamboo in April before being repatriated to China with his mother Bai Yun, bringing an end to a 23-year-long panda research programme in San Diego. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:21am, 18 May 2019Updated: 5:07am, 18 May 2019

China has developed an app that allows conservationists to identify individual pandas using facial recognition technology, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Researchers have also built a database with more than 120,000 images and 10,000 video clips of giant pandas that would allow them to correctly identify individual animals.

A giant panda cub at the Shenshuping base of China Conservation and Research Centre for Giant Pandas in Wolong, Sichuan, in January. Photo: Xinhua

“The app and database will help us gather more precise and well-rounded data on the population, distribution, ages, gender ratio, birth and deaths of wild pandas, who live in deep mountains and are hard to track,” Chen Peng, a researcher at the China Conservation and Research Centre for Giant Pandas, told Xinhua.

China last year also announced plans to create a bastion for giant pandas three times the size of Yellowstone National Park to link up and encourage breeding among existing wild populations of the notoriously slow-reproducing animal, state media reported.

At least 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) had been budgeted for the Giant Panda National Park in mountainous southwestern China for the nation’s favourite creature, China Daily reported.