Disease Free Futures

Our vision is to make wild animal suffering tractable through AI-enabled tools. For this, we carried out a case study for detecting diseases in wild deer. The idea is simple, yet its application is effective and highly scalable. We developed an AI tool that can detect an animal, in our case deer, and more importantly, if this animal shows abnormal behaviour, our tool matches symptoms to registered diseases.

Through this, direct help for wild animals can be more tractable, for instance, if a vaccination for the disease exists. Furthermore, the collected data can be used to answer important questions about the experiences of animals in the wild, such as 'How common are diseases in certain regions? 'How exactly does the disease affect the animal?' and, more broadly, 'What well-being does the animal's everyday behaviour indicate overall?'. Information like this is relevant for researchers, lawmakers, animal rights advocates and the public.

We start with deer, as they are large animals who are easily detected, and so far, eleven diseases that wild deer carry are visible on camera. However, in the best case, our idea can be scaled across other animal species and diseases.

This website that offers our tool will help other stakeholders conduct their own research and train the tool on other species. For instance, aquatic animals are often overlooked, and camera surveillance does already exist, such as for tracking the migration patterns for salmon. If you are interested, feel free to reach out to us.