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Individual Identification Of Polar Bears By Whisker Spot Patterns, Carlos Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many types of ecological studies require identification of individual animals. I developed and evaluated an automated identification system for polar bears (Ursus maritimus) based on their whisker spot patterns. First, I measured the reliability of using whisker spot patterns for identification from polar bear photographs taken in western Hudson Bay. This analysis involved estimating the complexity of each whisker spot pattern in terms of its information content. I found that 98% of patterns contained enough information to be reliable, and this result varied little among three different observers. Based on these results, I implemented a computer-aided identification system for polar …