Forget Finding Nemo: This AI can identify a single zebrafish out of a 100-strong shoal

AI systems excel in pattern recognition, so much so that they can stalk individual zebrafish and fruit flies even when the animals are in groups of up to a hundred. To demonstrate this, a group of researchers from the Champalimaud Foundation, a private biomedical research lab in Portugal, trained two convolutional neural networks to identify and track individual animals within a group. The aim is not so much to match or exceed humans' ability to spot and follow stuff, but rather to automate the process of studying the behavior of animals in their communities. "The ultimate goal of our team is understanding group behavior," said Gonzalo de Polavieja. "We want to understand how animals in a group decide together and learn together."