If each animal could be photographed and uniquely identified many times each day, the science of ecology and population biology, together with the resource management, biodiversity, and conservation decisions that depend on this science, could be dramatically improved.

compbio.cs.uic.edu/IBEIS

IBEIS is a large autonomous computational system that starts from image collections and progresses all the way to answering ecological and conservation queries, such as population sizes, species distributions and interactions, and movement patterns. The images are taken by field scientists, tourists, and incidental photographers, and are gathered from camera traps and autonomous vehicles. IBEIS can detect various species of animals in those images and identify individual animals of most striped, spotted, wrinkled or notched species. It stores the information about who the animals are, where they are and when they are there in a database and provides query tools to that data for scientists and curious people to find out what those animals are doing and why they are doing it.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

A good luck charm

Since my last post I've gotten the opportunity to go out on a few more game drives with tourists. It can be kind of tricky to get tourists to agree to take me along. After all, this is an experience they've paid for, and who am I to ask to tag along for free? Well, there are a couple tactics I use to snag that extra seat in the Land Rover. First, smile a lot. A friendly face gets me a long way. Second, inform them as soon as possible (but not in a know-it-all way) that I did my dissertation at Ol Pejeta and therefore know quite a lot about its wildlife and ecology. People love to get the inside scoop, so this helps. Third, and perhaps most effective, tell them I'm good luck! A little boasting about all the lions and rhinos my last drives have seen can effectively seal the deal.

I did a little bragging about my good luck to the latest group, and after the drive we had this morning I'm beginning to think I should visit the casinos when I get home! Our first stop was the marsh where we found twelve lions dining on a breakfast of freshly killed zebra in the golden morning light. And they were right on the road so we got close!


Really close.

This group was into birds as well, and we checked off a few new species and got a great view of this harrier hawk raiding other birds' nest in a dead tree:

I'd never seen the behavior before, so it was quite cool. Next treat: six hyenas on the prowl, and then a further seven at the den with young cubs.

After that, MORE lions. Not as many, nor so close to the road this time, but two lion sightings in a morning is nothing to sneeze at. We then came across a flock of guinea fowl in the dense bush absolutely losing their minds and alarm-calling at an unseen predator. After much waiting and looking, a shape flew across the road. I didn't get a good look, but the guest in the front seat described the size and color of a caracal, a small lynx-like cat with a sandy coat and tufted ears. We looked but didn't get a good look as it had already slinked off into the bushes - apparently my luck only goes so far!

Well I'll be sure to brag about this drive to my next potential group of tourists - hopefully I can continue bringing great sightings to them, and good data to IBEIS!
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