Monitoring Rabbits and Hares with a thermal camera

Animals identified by the DOC AI Cam

The DOC AI cam can be used to monitor rabbits and hares. It automatically identifies them using machine vision algorithms and provides a summary of the number that have been seen each night. At this stage it doesn't distinguish between rabbits and hares and labels them Leporidae.

The report you will get can be downloaded to a spreadsheet and shows you the average number of visits/night. This is potentially superior to the existing standard which involves either, going out at night with a spotlight and counting how many rabbits you see, or counting faecal pallets.

Monitoring rabbits with a thermal camera is not dependant on the capabilities of the person doing the monitoring. This makes much easier for anyone to monitor in a consistent way.

The DOC AI Cam can also be set up with alerts, so you can get an email when a rabbit or hare is detected. This is particularly useful for incursion detection if you have a piece of land that is supposed to be rabbit free.

Here's an example of a rabbit on a thermal video.

 

Here's an example of a summary report from one night

This information can be imported into a spreadsheet.