Mouse monitoring

Animals identified by the DOC AI Cam

Thermal cameras are a very sensitive technique for monitoring mice.  The body heat of a mouse stands out and shows up as a small blob. This type of movement would never trigger a trail camera.

In 2023 Cacophony Project developed an algorithm so the thermal camera can now distinguish between rats and mice. Before that, they were both classified as rodents.

In this monitoring report comparing tracking tunnels and chew cards to thermal cameras, the thermal camera detected 621 rodent visits compared to only 20 mouse and rat visits detected by the traditional monitoring. This experiment was done before the camera could distinguish between rats and mice.

The additional advantage is it takes a lot less time and skill to interpret the data. You machine vision takes most of the work out of this.