AI面部识别技术如何帮助保护美洲狮(下)

You get a close up image of a face, they're stunning.

你拍到一张脸部的特写图像，它们非常吸引人。

Just those huge eyes, and there's a lot of detail in whisker patterns and all sorts of stuff. They really are beautiful.

那双大眼睛，胡须图案和各种各样的东西都有很多细节。它们真的很漂亮。

So, Alexander and his team decided to capitalize on the dramatic facial features of mountain lions.

亚历山大和他的团队决定利用山狮引人注目的面部特征。

They added a few gadgets to their camera traps so that when motion was detected, a cougar kitten call was played.

他们在抓拍相机中添加了一些小工具，这样当检测到山狮移动时，就会播放美洲狮的叫声。

This noise reliably peaked the interest of passerby pumas so that they looked up long enough for the camera trap to grab a face shot.

这种声音确实引起了路过的美洲狮的兴趣，这样它们就会抬起头来，有足够长的时间让摄像机捕捉到脸部的照片。

Five independent investigators reviewed the puma headshots and attempted to ID the individual animals.

五名独立调查人员查看了美洲狮的头部图像，并试图确认每只动物的身份。

Compared to the traditional side angle camera trap, the new attention-getting device was about 92% more accurate.

与传统的侧面抓拍相机相比，这种新的吸引注意力的装置的准确度提高了92%左右。

This work was recently published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

这项研究最近发表在《生态学与进化》期刊上。

This study is an important step on the path to being able to more confidently identify and track animals, in a really scalable way.

这项研究是在以一种真正可扩展的方式、更自信地识别和追踪动物的道路上迈出了重要的一步。

Snapping headshots of mountain lions also opens up new opportunities to involve AI techniques.

拍摄山狮的头部照片也为使用人工智能技术开辟了新的机会。

Like, the facial recognition technology used by airport security — this could really expedite the image analyzation process for researchers.

比如，机场安检使用的面部识别技术--这真的可以加快研究人员的图像分析过程。

I think that's very possible.

我认为这是非常有可能的。

That could be a really useful technique in the future.

这在未来可能会是一项非常有用的技术。

There have been a lot of other facial recognition studies done on animals, but it's never been with a camera trap.

已经有很多其他的面部识别研究在动物身上开展，但还从来没有使用过抓拍相机。

So that was kind of the unique thing about this study was merging these two ideas.

因此，这项研究的独特之处在于融合了这两种想法。

And beyond being able to more precisely understand how many mountain lions are in an area, Alexander says that this new camera trap method could be used for tracking other critters that lack distinguishing side colors but have unique features elsewhere.

亚历山大说，除了能够更准确地了解一个地区有多少美洲狮之外，这种新的抓拍相机方法还可以用来跟踪其他侧边没有明显颜色但在其他地方有独特特征的生物。

This includes vulnerable species like wolverines, pine martens, and even grizzly bears.

这包括易受伤害的物种，如狼獾、松貂，甚至灰熊。

That’s worth saying "cheese" for the camera, don't you think?

对着镜头微笑是值得的，你不觉得吗？

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science, I’m Ashleigh Papp.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是阿什利·帕普。