Identification of animal individuals using deep learning: A case study of giant panda

Abstract Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is an iconic species of conservation. However, long-term monitoring of wild giant pandas has been a challenge, largely due to the lack of appropriate method for the identification of target panda individuals. Although there are some traditional methods, such as distance-bamboo stem fragments methods, molecular biological method, and manual visual identification, they all have some limitations that can restrict their application. Therefore, it is urgent to explore a reliable and efficient approach to identify giant panda individuals. Here, we applied the deep learning technology and developed a novel face-identification model based on convolutional neural network to identify giant panda individuals. The model was able to identify 95% of giant panda individuals in the validation dataset. In all simulated field situations where the quality of photo data was degraded, the model still accurately identified more than 90% of panda individuals. The identification accuracy of our model is robust to brightness, small rotation, and cleanness of photos, although large rotation angle (>20°) of photos has significant influence on the identification accuracy of the model (P