No More Name Tags: AI to Tell Donkeys Apart at Island Sanctuary

Artificial intelligence is coming to the farm—literally.

Visitors to the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary will soon be able to recognize and learn about their favorite donkeys using a new mobile app that uses AI and a phone camera to tell the animals apart.

Developed by scientists at the University of Southampton, the app—called Ask ELVIS (Equine Long-range Visual Identification System)—uses hundreds of images of the donkeys taken from multiple angles. With machine learning, it attempts to distinguish between individual animals, giving visitors the name and a profile of the donkey in front of them.

Currently, the app is still in early stages, with an accuracy of just 50%, but project leader Dr Xiaohao Cai is optimistic that it will be ready for public use by the end of the year.

“At the moment we’re trying to bridge the gap between the experimental accuracy and the real-world accuracy,” said Dr Cai.

The idea for the app came after the sanctuary removed the name collars once worn by the donkeys. Though useful for visitors, the collars had become a safety hazard for the animals.

“There had been some accidents and near misses, so we got rid of all the collars in 2023,” said Gordon Pattison, a volunteer and trustee at the sanctuary. “They’re not of any use to the animal, but they’re incredibly useful to the public.”

The sanctuary’s popular donkey adoption program has thousands of supporters, many of whom come specifically to see “their” donkey. Ask ELVIS aims to bring a more humane and tech-savvy way to reconnect adopters with their furry friends.

The app is named after Elvis, a beloved donkey who passed away in 2024 and remains a symbolic figure at the sanctuary. When launched, the app greets users with an image of Elvis, asking, “Who’s that donkey over there?” as it works to identify the animal in view.

Future versions of Ask ELVIS may also help detect subtle signs of illness in the donkeys—something the sanctuary’s caretakers say would be incredibly helpful, since donkeys tend to mask pain.

“They don’t give out much, they’re very stoic—so we have to look for subtle clues,” said Pattison. “At the moment, we will pick up a health issue, but we might not pick it up immediately.”

He added that the project is a reminder that AI can serve more than just large enterprises or high-tech sectors.

“If you’ve got an idea, it can help you out—you just need to approach the problem from a different point of view.”