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Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade

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Paul Tree
Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade

The amber eyes in the image above belong to Manno, who was trafficked from Africa to Syria before being rescued.

A year-long BBC investigation into the brutal smuggling of chimpanzees found that as pets in wealthy homes or as performers in commercial zoos, baby chimps can command a price tag of $12,500, a little under £10,000.

The idea came to conservationist Alexandra Russo when she was investigating online ape trafficking and sifting through posts on Instagram and Facebook for evidence of chimpanzees being offered for sale.

"It is important to get images of each individual in different positions, facial expressions, in altered lighting, and with the head tilted at a different angle," explains Alexandra.

In each of these pictures, a box is drawn around the chimp's face and then matched with existing images in the ever expanding photo database.

"They send us images of known named apes so we can build the individual recognition algorithm, but the fact that chimpanzee faces are so close to human faces creates a harder technical challenge," Dr McCormick says.

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