When you own one or more pets, one of the things that most worries you is their health. Possible problems are not easy to diagnose, and the information Google returns is often too alarming to take seriously.
In the case of cats, recently, a group of researchers carried out the development of a tool that will surely please many lovers of these felines. Is about Tably, an application developed by a technology company specialized in animal health named sylvester.ai established in Calgary, Canada. The tool is intended to determine if a cat is in pain, using the phone’s camera for this.
In this sense, Tably makes the analysis of a series of criteria present in the cat’s physiognomy to detect any signs of distress, such as the position of the ears and head, the tension exerted on the muzzle, the narrowing of the eyes or the movement of the whiskers.
A study carried out in 2019 and focused on the Feline Gesture Scale (FGS) determined that this method was valid and reliable for processing information that would allow determining the presence of acute pain in cats.
In this regard, Miche Priest, the person in charge of the company Sylvester.ai, indicated “Tably helps human cat owners know if their cat is in pain or not […] We were able to train a machine using machine learning and a series of images»
Likewise, Liz Ruelle, a doctor at the Wild Rose Cat Clinic veterinary center in Calgary, where the algorithm training was carried out, believes that in the long term Tably could become a very useful tool for young veterinarians.
For her part, Alice Potter, a member of the British charity organization for animals RSPCA explained that, although it may be useful to create an application that acquires pattern learning from the recognition of the cat’s face, as the owner of this animal, the person must appreciate other physical signs that could warn about the presence of some discomfort in your body. If its tail looks very tense, it is likely that the cat is scared or worried.
You can get more information at sylvester.ai/cat-owners
