Combination of facial and nose features of Amur tigers to determine age

Caiping Zhao; Wenrui Dai; Qiang Liu; Dongqi Liu; Nathan James Roberts; Zhaoli Liu; Ming Gong; Hongkun Qiu; Changhai Liu; Dan Liu; Guangkai Ma; Guangshun Jiang

doi:10.1111/1749-4877.12817

Combination of facial and nose features of Amur tigers to determine age

Integr Zool. 2024 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/1749-4877.12817. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Caiping Zhao^#^{1

2}, Wenrui Dai^#³, Qiang Liu^{1

2}, Dongqi Liu^{1

2}, Nathan James Roberts^{1

2}, Zhaoli Liu^{1

2}, Ming Gong⁴, Hongkun Qiu⁴, Changhai Liu⁴, Dan Liu⁴, Guangkai Ma³, Guangshun Jiang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Feline Research Center of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, College of Wildlife and Protected Area, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, P. R. China.
² Research Center for Northeast Asia Biodiversity Conservation, Harbin, P. R. China.
³ College of Computer and Control Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, P. R. China.
⁴ Heilongjiang Siberia Tiger Park, Harbin, Heilongjiang, P. R. China.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 38509845
DOI: 10.1111/1749-4877.12817

Abstract

We found that the area of black round or irregular-shaped spots on the tiger's nose increased with age, indicating a positive relationship between age and nose features. We used the deep learning model to train the facial and nose image features to identify the age of Amur tigers, using a combination of classification and prediction methods to achieve age determination with an accuracy of 87.81%.

Publication types

Letter