# Face Recognition: Primates in the Wild

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08790 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08790/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Apr 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [WildlifeDatasets: An open-source toolkit for animal re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09118/) (2023)
- [Perspectives on individual animal identification from biology and computer vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00560/) (2021)
- [BaboonLand Dataset: Tracking Primates in the Wild and Automating Behaviour Recognition from Drone Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17698/) (2024)
- [Computer Vision for Primate Behavior Analysis in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16424/) (2024)
- [WildFusion: Individual Animal Identification with Calibrated Similarity Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12934/) (2024)
- [ElephantBook: A Semi-Automated Human-in-the-Loop System for Elephant Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15083/) (2021)
- [Animal Identification with Independent Foreground and Background Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12930/) (2024)
- [The Animal ID Problem: Continual Curation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10377/) (2021)
- [NORPPA: NOvel Ringed seal re-identification by Pelage Pattern Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02498/) (2022)
- [CatFLW: Cat Facial Landmarks in the Wild Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04232/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Pelage Pattern Unwrapping for Animal Re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15369/) (2025)
- [Self-supervised Learning on Camera Trap Footage Yields a Strong Universal Face Embedder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10552/) (2025)
- [Automated Detection of Cat Facial Landmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09793/) (2023)
- [Pairwise Matching of Intermediate Representations for Fine-grained Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22881/) (2025)
- [Physical Artificial Intelligence: The Concept Expansion of Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06564/) (2021)
- [Combining feature aggregation and geometric similarity for re-identification of patterned animals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06335/) (2023)
- [Degradation-based augmented training for robust individual animal re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04163/) (2026)
- [Dog nose print matching with dual global descriptor based on Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00580/) (2022)
- [Image-Based Leopard Seal Recognition: Approaches and Challenges in Current Automated Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07269/) (2024)
- [Beyond Humans: Multispecies Animal Face Recognition Using Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09353/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a new method of primate face recognition, and evaluate this method on several endangered primates, including golden monkeys, lemurs, and chimpanzees. The three datasets contain a total of 11,637 images of 280 individual primates from 14 species. Primate face recognition performance is evaluated using two existing state-of-the-art open-source systems, (i) FaceNet and (ii) SphereFace, (iii) a lemur face recognition system from literature, and (iv) our new convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture called PrimNet. Three recognition scenarios are considered: verification (1:1 comparison), and both open-set and closed-set identification (1:N search). We demonstrate that PrimNet outperforms all of the other systems in all three scenarios for all primate species tested. Finally, we implement an Android application of this recognition system to assist primate researchers and conservationists in the wild for individual recognition of primates.