Conservationists hoping to save one of the world's most endangered animals have a new high-tech tool in their arsenal: Social media. Grevy's zebras once roamed across five countries in Africa, but their numbers have dwindled to barely 3,000 due to habitat loss and hunting. Now an online platform known as Wildbook is keeping tabs on these precious equines, by enabling volunteers take and upload photos that are then matched against zebras already in the site's database. The zebra's distinct stripes, which are as unique as fingerprints, allow them to be easily identified from among hundreds of thousands of submitted photos. Grevy's zebras once roamed across five countries in Africa.

To the untrained eye, zebras in Kenya probably all look alike. But each animal's black and white markings are like a fingerprint, distinct -- and invaluable for scientists who need to track the animals and information about them, including their births, deaths, health and migration patterns. Traditionally, getting this kind of information has been an invasive and labor-intensive process. But breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and crowdsourcing of photos of individual animals are beginning to change the conservation game. Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit Wild Me has developed AI to pick out identifying markers -- the stripes on a zebra, the spots on a giraffe, the contours of a flukewhale's fin -- and catalog animals much faster than a human can.

Give Jason Holmberg 10,000 zebra photos and he'll find the specific individual zebra you're looking for, no problem. "It could take two minutes," he said. Holmberg is executive director of the nonprofit Wild Me. The Portland-based organization has developed a digital tool called Wildbook that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite wildlife identification. In tandem with citizen science, Wildbook is able to condense years of human work -- like photographing thousands of animals and identifying each by hand -- into a matter of weeks.

Give Jason Holmberg 10,000 zebra photos and he'll find the specific individual zebra you're looking for, no problem. "It could take two minutes," he said. Holmberg is executive director of the nonprofit Wild Me. The Portland-based organization has developed a digital tool called Wildbook that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite wildlife identification. In tandem with citizen science, Wildbook is able to condense years of human work -- like photographing thousands of animals and identifying each by hand -- into a matter of weeks.

Give Jason Holmberg 10,000 zebra photos and he'll find the specific individual zebra you're looking for, no problem. "It could take two minutes," he said. Holmberg is executive director of the nonprofit Wild Me. The Portland-based organization has developed a digital tool called Wildbook that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite wildlife identification. In tandem with citizen science, Wildbook is able to condense years of human work -- like photographing thousands of animals and identifying each by hand -- into a matter of weeks.

Conservationists use data collecting technologies and artificial intelligence to turn whale watching into scientific research, gathering photos of whale encounters from citizen scientists to help protect the mammals. After centuries of whaling and habitat destruction, saving whales is one of modern science's great ambitions. Researchers are turning to technology like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and crowd sourced data to better understand and protect these magnificent, mysterious creatures. Increasingly, research biologists use digital technologies to help track, document and analyze animal populations and their migrations. The technology even enables weekend whale watchers to become citizen scientists in whale tracking.