Facial recognition software used to study the social behaviour of individual Greylag Geese in Europe will soon be used to monitor one of the rarest geese in the world, the Cape Barren Goose in South Australia.
The program tested each goose face with lifesize 2D images of members of the Greylag Goose flock, originally started by the founding father of animal behaviour, Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in the 1950s. The latest findings into visual cues of individuality not only gives insights into the birds' social structure but illustrate how the software to monitor individual faces or body patterns can be monitored using photographs collected in the field -- for animal numbers and movements -- in conservation efforts.
Zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch in 1973, used the behaviour of the Greylag Goose to found the discipline of animal behaviour.Sonia Kleindorfer, Benedikt Heger, Damian Tohl, Didone Frigerio, Josef Hemetsberger, Leonida Fusani, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Diane Colombelli-Négrel.