Colchester Zoo pioneer thermal tech to keep wild elephants safe
They have been training cameras to spot the difference between the animals and humans
'Innovative work' has been going on with the elephants at an Essex zoo, to try and protect those in the wild.
Whipsnade and Colchester Zoos have been working together, using thermal imaging cameras to take photos every day for two years, with the aim of creating an 'early warning system'.
It's hoped a cost-effective system can be created to send out to Africa and Asia for communities living near the animals.
Alasdair Davies, from ZSL, told us:
"If there are elephants trampling crops, or approaching a field we need to know that we can send a response team, who will peacefully move them away without untrained members of the public getting involved and there being an actual incident."
How does it work?
The project uses thermal cameras to identify the heat signature of elephants, spearheading the creation of the HEAT (Human-Elephant Alert Technologies) Project.
Cameras have been set up all around the enclosures in Essex and Bedfordshire, taking thermal pictures of the elephants from different distances, at different angles, and whilst the elephants are doing different things, such as training or reaching up to eat food.
Alasdair said:
"We photographed them every single day for two years, rain or shine with a thermal camera and we have been teaching the camera how to detect an elephant."
The images of the African elephants can also be compared to those of the Asian elephants at Whipsnade Zoo to detect the differences in size and shape of the different species.
The thousands of thermal photographs collected are being used to “train” camera technology to recognise what an elephant looks like, and at present the “model” created can confidently identify elephants and people up to 30 metres away.
Colchester Zoo said:
"Our footage yielded some fantastic photos, perfect for confusing and then teaching the “model”, with our keepers in close proximity to the elephants whilst training and our elephants reaching up to feed off branches, thus presenting a different body shape for the technology to recognise so that it doesn’t falsely identify the image as that of a human."
What is the aim?
The ultimate aim is for the development of a low cost camera system that can be used in the field.
It will be able to detect elephants 24/7 as it can “see” the thermal shape of elephants (even in the dark), sending an alert to communities living around elephants so they can avoid any conflict situations.
Human-elephant conflict is a major conservation concern in elephant range countries and there is no other low-cost solution available that is capable of generating early warning alerts 24/7, so we are honoured to participate in this study.
Alasdair paid tribute to the keepers at both zoos:
"Their real interest was at they could participate in a project which is going to ultimately save the lives of wild elephants.
"The end goal is we hope to get them out into the field and say 'Hey, all that work we did in the rain and the sun, here is is doing something in the wild."
This elephant alert system has been developed as part of an alliance between the Arribada Initiative, a UK-based technology NGO, the Zoological Society of London, WWF Netherlands and WILDLABS, an online conservation technology network.