New software developed with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society will allow tiger researchers to rapidly identify individual animals by creating a three-dimensional model using photos taken by remote cameras.

The software, described in an issue of the journal Biology Letters, may also help identify the origin of tigers from confiscated skins.

The study's authors include Lex Hiby of Conservation Research Ltd., Phil Lovell of the Gatty Marine Laboratory's Sea Mammal Research Unit, and Narendra Patil, N. Samba Kumar, Arjun N. Gopalaswamy and K. Ullas Karanth all of the Wildlife Conservation Society's India Program.

Researchers currently calculate tiger populations by painstakingly reviewing hundreds of photos of animals caught by camera "traps" and then matching their individual stripe patterns, which are unique to each animal.

Using a formula developed by renowned tiger expert Ullas Karanth of WCS, researchers accurately estimate local populations by how many times individual tigers are "recaptured" by the camera trap technique.

It is expected that the new software will allow researchers to rapidly identify animals, which in turn could speed up tiger conservation efforts.

"This new software will make it much easier for conservationists to identify individual tigers and estimate populations," said Ullas Karanth, Senior Conservation Scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and one of the study's co-authors. "The fundamentals of tiger conservation are knowing how many tigers live in a study area before you can start to measure success."

"This is a three-dimensional model fitted to a camera trap image of a tiger. (Credit: WCS)"

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society