Software Foils Poachers With Rare Rhinos' Footprints

Posted by News Editor in Latest News, RSS, Wildlife on September 14, 2020 3:41 pm / no comments

DURHAM, North Carolina, September 14, 2020 (ENS) – Interactive software that reads and analyzes footprints left by black rhinoceroses can be used to monitor the movements of the critically endangered animals in the wild, giving conservationists a new way to keep watch on the species and help keep them safe from poachers, according to a new Duke University-led study.

The software called the Footprint Identification Technique, or FIT, runs on JMP software from SAS Institute. JMP is a suite of computer programs for statistical analysis developed by the JMP business unit of the SAS Institute, an American multinational developer of analytics software based in Cary, North Carolina.

The software uses advanced algorithms to analyze more than 100 measurements of a rhino’s footprint.

Because each rhino’s footprint is as distinctive as a human fingerprint, the analyzed images can be archived electronically in a global database of previously collected footprint images for matching.

“If you find a match, you can identify the individual animal who left the mark and, by plotting the locations of all the other places that mark has been seen, track its movements without disturbing it or coming into close enough contact with it for there to be a risk of animal-to-human viral transmissions,” said Zoe Jewell, adjunct associate professor at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

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