Standby for the announcement of an SCI "giraffe slam".

It wouldn’t surprise me.

I am sure some enterprising South Africa crooked PH would be happy to meet the demands of the “collectors” seeking membership in one of those uniquely stupid circles!

Based on the map, I've only seen Southern and Masai. Never had any interest in shooting one, even in Namibia where it can be done. In Tanzania they are Royal game and totally off limits. They just sit and look at you and let you take pictures for the most part. Wouldn't be much of a "hunt".

[QUOTE]Originally posted by lavaca:
Based on the map, I've only seen Southern and Masai. Never had any interest in shooting one, even in Namibia where it can be done. In Tanzania they are Royal game and totally off limits. They just sit and look at you and let you take pictures for the most part. Wouldn't be much of a "hunt".[/QUOTE

I hunted 1 Girraffe I Namibia as a management one it was a hard hunt 9 hours to get one. These ones where very wild and didn’t stand around.

quote:

Originally posted by Spooksar:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by lavaca:
Based on the map, I've only seen Southern and Masai. Never had any interest in shooting one, even in Namibia where it can be done. In Tanzania they are Royal game and totally off limits. They just sit and look at you and let you take pictures for the most part. Wouldn't be much of a "hunt".[/QUOTE

I hunted 1 Girraffe I Namibia as a management one it was a hard hunt 9 hours to get one. These ones where very wild and didn’t stand around.

If they were easy the place I hunted in Zimbabwe had a giraffe with a snare on it's leg that they had been trying to put down for over 1 1/2 years. One day we were driving back to camp for lunch and this giraffe was near out path. The PH told me to get ready while still driving and when he stopped to lean the rifle out the window and shoot him at the base of the skull. The Giraffe weight about 1/2 of what a normal giraffe would weigh. His hide was in poor shape and he was very thin. I got the story on the giraffe from the PH, and he was surprised that the animal was near the road. 1st time that he was seen near a road. That is when I learned that it was a production to recover a giraffe. This was the middle of April and the hide was not recoverable due to the heat.

Later on this hunt I added a giraffe to my list and we needed to have it down by 8 AM so that the hide would be in good shape.

Spotting a giraffe is easy, getting up on them is not. Best chance was finding a single old bull and plan a good stalk. If they were in a small group, with so many eyes they would run off well before you could make it into a good shooting position.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202105130026.html


Zimbabwe: French Scientists in Zimbabwe Use Facial Recognition Technology to ID Giraffes



12 MAY 2021
Radio France Internationale
By Ryan Truscott

A team of French scientists in Zimbabwe's Hwange National park has developed a deep learning computer system to distinguish between individual giraffes, a tool that could help to conserve this iconic African species from extinction.

Individual giraffes' unique coat patterns, consisting of brown blotches on a tan background, make them difficult to tell apart. And researchers desperately need to distinguish between giraffes since populations in this remote part of northwestern Zimbabwe are on the decline, for reasons still being investigated.

"To our knowledge, this is the first attempt in using deep learning techniques for this task," lead author of the new study, Vincent Miele from the University of Lyon's Laboratory of Biometry and Evolutionary Biology told RFI.

Between 2014-2018 his team photographed around 400 giraffes in Hwange -- the park where Cecil the Lion once lived. Out of a set of nearly 4,000 pictures a training dataset was created by cropping the images to display the animals' flanks. These were fed into a computer system, known as a convolutional neural network (CNN) that analyses visual imagery.



Ninety percent accuracy

This deep learning system, mostly used in facial recognition of humans, was trained by the scientists to re-identify individual giraffes in Hwange with 90 percent accuracy.

"The advantage of deep learning is that once the computer has been trained, it is very fast and can tackle dozens of images in a few seconds," explained Miele. "Deep learning's algorithms are known to outperform any other algorithms in terms of predicting performance."

Training computers to sift through photographs is critical to the work of field biologists.

Digital cameras and camera traps (remote devices that use sensors to photograph passing animals) can generate tens of thousands of images. These can become overwhelming, the authors note in a new study published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.



The team managed to train their computer programme with just five or so photographs per animal. These images were then altered, or "augmented" in the laboratory to create variability, making the programme more effective at remembering individuals seen in the park.

Important data

Although the system was occasionally foxed by poor quality pictures, the team observed very few incorrect matches.

"We observed very little or wrong matching," Christophe Bonenfant, co-author of the study told RFI. "When a match is reported the result is really good and reliable."

He said the system is used to obtain important data on group composition, life histories or movement of giraffes.



"Like most giraffe populations in the world, abundance is decreasing at Hwange and obviously everybody is hunting for an explanation," he added.

The CNN system tested in Hwange builds on earlier work that uses artificial intelligence to distinguish between giraffes. Having tools like these to keep tabs on the animals will prove invaluable for their conservation.


Population decline

Giraffes have undergone worrying population declines without the headline-grabbing attention given to other megafauna, like lions, elephants and rhinos.



The International Union for Conservation of Nature recognises nine subspecies of giraffe. Most are listed as near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.

The Giraffe Conservation Foundation an independent group working in 16 African countries, estimates the animals' continent-wide population has declined by nearly 30 percent since the 1980s, from more than 155,000 to around 117,000 now.

Although the CNN system used in Zimbabwe was designed to recognise and monitor giraffes, it uses freely-available software and researchers can tweak it to apply to a range of other mammals. In Hwange, this might include zebra and kudu, a large antelope that has majestically twirled horns and -- critically -- unique stripes on its coat.

Said Bonenfant: "We hope that our system will be adopted in other sites or species."

Thanks for sharing Saeed. I thought this was quite informative and interesting