Tiger poachers watch out – you can’t hide from algorithms. Software developed by Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s India programme and other conservationists can ID a tiger skin – whether it is in possession of a body or not – by comparison with a database of photos taken of wild tigers by camera traps.

The software builds up a 3-D image of the tiger from its stripes, which are unique to each tiger. This allows tigers that might have been snapped multiple times to be ID’d properly, helping conservationists to more accurately track tiger populations.

The software can also match the stripes from a skin with the photos from the database, making it easier to catch poachers.

“The fundamentals of tiger conservation are knowing how many tigers live in a study area before you can start to measure success,” explains Kuranth (press release).

The work was published in Biology Letters this week, with the aim of tracking numbers of tigers (New York Times). Other news reports concentrate more on nabbing poachers (ABC News).

If you want to track the tigers in your neighbourhood, try it out yourself. I wonder if it applies to tabby cats too?

Image: Wildlife Conservation Society