Spotting lemurs: Facial-recognition software isn't just for humans anymore

February 18, 2017 --Observing lemurs in the jungles of Madagascar is no easy task. "We find the group," explains Stacey Tecot, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology, "and then we watch them for a little bit, we get our bearings ... and then we start to collect our data." Doing so is an all-day process of recording each individual, more or less continuously. But lemurs typically live in "troops" of up to 15 individuals. To get solid data, Dr. Tecot tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview, "you really have to know that who you're watching is who you think you're watching."