Lemurs get high-tech help

In 2012, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the Madagascar natives as the most endangered mammals on the planet. But a team of researchers have developed a system called LemurFaceID, which uses facial-recognition software to spot lemurs in their natural habitat. "The original inspiration for developing LemurFaceID was a desire to develop a noninvasive tool that would help us ID and track lemurs," Stacey Tecot, University of Arizona assistant professor and senior researcher of the project, told Digital Trends. To minimize invasiveness, Tecot and her colleague, George Washington University's Rachel Jacobs, decided not to capture or tag their subjects, but soon found that such a hands-off approach made collecting sufficient datasets difficult. "I'd explored using dye via a gentle water gun, but didn't get very far with that," Tecot said.