Scientists teach AI to recognise when a goat is upset

System could be used to increase animal welfare, and might inform care of child and non-verbal patients, researchers suggest

Andrew Griffin
Friday 08 November 2024 12:06 EST
Comments
(AFP via Getty Images)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Scientists have taught an artificial intelligent system to be able to recognise goats in distress.

The tool could not only improve animal welfare but help develop new ways of caring for children and other non-verbal patients, according to those behind it.

Typically, understanding whether an animal is in pain or suffering can be difficult, and relies on the expertise of vets. Often the fix for a medical issue might be simple – but it may be much more difficult to know that one is needed.

The system was created by filming the faces of goats that were in pain, and others that were comfortable. Those videos were then fed into a machine learning system that was taught to be able to spot those goats that might be in distress.

The system was between 62 per cent and 80 per cent accurate at identifying the faces of goats that were in pain, according to its researchers. But they hope it will improve.

So far, it has only been trained and tested on 40 goats. But the researchers hope that it can be taught with more goats and with different animal species.

“If we solve the problem with animals, we can also solve the problem for children and other non-verbal patients,” said Ludovica Chiavaccini from the University of Florida.

“It’s not just an animal-welfare issue,” she said. “We also know animals that are in pain don’t gain weight and are less productive. Farmers are becoming more and more aware of the need to control acute and chronic pain in animals.”

The work is reported in a new paper, ‘Automated acute pain prediction in domestic goats using deep learning-based models on video-recordings’, published in Scientific Reports.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in