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AI opens new era in cognitive studies of wild primates
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This is the first scalable method for conducting controlled cognitive experiments on wild primates in their natural environment, removing the skew introduced by lab-only studies. The open-source code and low-cost hardware blueprint lower the barrier for other teams to replicate or adapt the closed-loop pipeline for different species and field conditions.
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CapuchinAI integrates facial recognition, individual-specific touchscreen task presentation, and automated food reward delivery into a battery-powered, field-deployable computing platform.
Field tests in Costa Rica's Taboga Forest Reserve showed the system identifies individual capuchins with 97% accuracy after training on still images and video, and wild monkeys quickly learned touchscreen-reward associations.
The proof-of-concept paper, published in the American Journal of Primatology, includes open-source code and a hardware blueprint so other researchers can adapt the method for cognitive studies across wild primate species.
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