JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Facial recognition is nothing new. Facebook can recognize you in an uploaded photo and your iPhone can recognize your face to unlock the device. Now, facial recognition is being used to help reunite lost pets with their owners on the First Coast.
For about a year, the Jacksonville Humane Society has synced its software with the program “Finding Rover.” The website and mobile app use facial recognition software to match lost and found animals, including those that end up at the shelter.
Once a person creates profiles for their pets, they can report them missing in one click.
“Should a match show up here at the Humane Society, the app would alert you to say ‘Hey, there’s a potential match, here it is,’ and it would show you that the pet is waiting here at JHS,” Lindsay Layendecker, senior manager of education and outreach for the Jacksonville Humane Society, said.
People who find pets in their neighborhoods can also upload a photo to see if there's a matching pet that was reported missing. Finding Rover also allows users to browse pets that are available for adoption.
Layendecker has set up profiles for her dog, Dudley, and all five of her cats. To test out the program, Layendecker reported Dudley as lost.
“And see it’s searching now to see if there are any matches in the system,” Layendecker said, watching the app work on her phone. “So it’s given me a couple facial matches, and look! And those look like dogs that do look like him.”
Layendecker said Finding Rover is one of many tools people should use to not only search for their own pets but to also find owners of lost pets to keep the animals out of shelters.
“Being reunited at the shelter doesn’t happen as often as we would like,” she said.
In fact, of the 8,863 animals taken into JHS in 2018, there were only 397 owner reunions.
For more resources on what to do if you lose your pet, click here.