Hong Kong’s Ocean Park uses AI to track, enrich lives of giant pandas, monkeys

Hong Kong’s Ocean Park has started using AI to better track the behaviour of its giant panda twins and golden monkeys, allowing for more personalised care and improved habitat design, with plans to extend the technology to dolphin research.

The theme park’s chairman, Paulo Pong Kin-yee, also reported a surge in overseas visitors over the winter period, fuelled by a 60 per cent jump in long-haul arrivals, notably from the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

On Wednesday, the park unveiled upgrades to its animal monitoring system to make use of artificial intelligence (AI), shifting from manual sampling of video footage to round-the-clock tracking that analyses how animals use different parts of their enclosures.

The enhanced AI model allows caretakers to better position enrichment items that support animals’ physical and mental well-being.

The AI technology has already been used to monitor the park’s home-grown giant panda twins, An An and Ke Ke, and golden monkeys.

It can distinguish between individual animals and monitor interactions, such as the distance between a mother and her offspring over time.

Pong said enhanced algorithms and customised AI, now able to identify body parts and postures of the park’s high-value conservation species, have delivered “deeper insights into individual animal behaviours”.