System for Elephant Ear-pattern Knowledge (SEEK) to identify individual African elephants

Abstract

Elephant numbers have drastically declined over the past century with illegal killings, habitat fragmentation and human-elephant-conflict representing the greatest threats. Information on estimates of abundance and demographics are important to understand the long-term implications of these threats. Mark-resighting studies can provide valuable insights but depend on the individual identification of numerous elephants within populations across both Africa and Asia. Most photographic elephant identification studies are still reliant on human memory and manual matching of known individuals. A process that is not only labour intensive but also largely dependent on experiential skills that need to be developed over time by researchers. Over the course of almost 25 years, Elephants Alive has developed a unique System of Elephant Ear-pattern Knowledge (SEEK), which makes allowance for rapid individual identification of savannah elephants with reduced observer bias using basic software while also accommodating missing information or changes in identification features over time.