As unique as fingerprints As unique as fingerprints

A conservation group is trying to harness the power of artificial intelligence to help identify tigers by their stripes and stop poachers in their tracks.

THE mystery of Tigress T13 – that’s how one local newspaper in India described the case of notorious wildlife smuggler, Nepalese Lodu Dime, who was arrested in 2018 after years on the run.

Wildlife authorities in Nepal had been on the tail of the 44-year-old smuggles after an Interpol operation seized five tiger pelts and seven sacks of animal parts, including bones, from a vehicle on its way from Kathmandu to Rasuma – a city on the country’s border with Tibet – five years earlier, in 2013.

Among the tiger pelts recovered from the raid was that of a tigress, known only as T13, from Madhya Pradesh, over 1,500km away in India. The animal was last seen on camera traps with its cubs in the Raikassa area of Pench in Madhya Pradesh in February 2012. Then, they disappeared without a trace.

The animal’s disappearance would have remained a mystery if scientists did not later match the stripes on the seized tiger pelt with those of T13.

The identification finally nailed the connection between India and Nepal in the cross-border wildlife smuggling network run by Dime and his accomplices.

It’s cases like the T13 tigress that Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA) Tiger and Wildlife Crime campaign leader Debbie Banks is hoping to see more of.

“A tiger’s stripes are as unique as human fingerprints,” she explains.

“There have been instances,” Banks says, referring to T13, “where the identification of a tiger has actually led to law enforcement cooperation between countries.”

In the case of Dime, Indian immigration had tipped off Nepalese authorities about the trafficker’s return to Nepal and the man, who had earlier been convicted in absentia by a Nepalese court, was eventually arrested at the Tribhuwan International Airport in Kathmandu.

■ A famous Malay saying is “Harimau mati meninggalkan Belang, Manusia mati meninggalkan Nama”, which means that we leave our legacies behind when we die.

■ A tiger's stripes is an example of what scientists call disruptive colouration. In the wild, the animals use their stripes to camouflage themselves among the trees and tall grasses of the forest's undergrowth to hunt their prey.

■ This is because tigers are solitary predators and do not hunt in groups like lions.

■ Yet another story has it that the tiger got its stripes after injuring itself while trying to escape a stockade that the rabbit has tricked it into.

■ One popular Asian folklore has it that the tiger got its stripes from the burns it sustained in a fire set by humans after the animal demanded that he share his wisdom.

■ Another tale has it that the tiger's stripes were formed from being stung by bees which swarmed on the animal after it was tricked into disturbing a hive.

■ However, a more scientific theory was one proposed by the British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s. ■ He suggested that a tiger's stripes or leopard's spots are formed from the interactions of a pair of morphogens — the signalling molecules that govern tissue development in animals. ■ However, some scientists have since raised questions about the theory.