Find Your Lost Pet With Facial Recognition

When pets go missing, it can often be a stressful and a worrisome time for owners to track down their missing animal. In addition to old fashioned flyers, calling animal shelters, or social media posts, there’s another tool for folks to find their furry friends: facial recognition technology.

We’ve written about how biometric technology has made its way to the animal kingdom before, and there’s a growing trend in lost and found critter cases where facial recognition is being used to recover lost pets with apps like FindingRover. Users can register at no cost, the app offering the ability to either report a missing pet or report a found animal. There are also options for pet adoption. FindingRover purports to create an online community, with theoretically anyone in any location able to register their pet, upload an image of a lost pet, or list a found cat or dog.

While you should always have collar and identification on your animal, there is a possibility it could fall off or become damaged or unreadable. Microchipping has recently become a more popular way to ensure our four legged friends are found if they wander off from home; however, it can only be scanned at a vet clinic or animal shelter in order to be activated.  Facial recognition technology allows for contactless way for people to match lost pets with searching owners, which can help when dealing with shy animals who are obviously not quite sure how to find home and a little too scared to be approached by strangers.

Between conservation efforts, industrial farming, and pet rescue, facial recognition continues to have a multitude of applications in the animal world.

July 10, 2018 – Susan Stover