Computers don't byte

Episode 20: Rita Pucci: Reading the stripes, AI meets wildlife

Published on 7 April 2026 - Created by Michiel van Poelgeest, Dimitra Kouimtzidou, Marcel Tichelaar

What’s the difference between a zebra and a zebrafish? Assistant professor Rita Pucci, who works at both LIACS and Naturalis, brings together biodiversity and computer science. She’s developing a model that can recognise unique skin patterns of individual animals within a herd: a breakthrough that could transform how wildlife is monitored.

It could also reveal whether inbreeding is occurring—crucial information for species like zebras, where inbreeding can have devastating consequences. But before the model can reliably identify patterns in zebra coats, it first needs to learn how to generate patterns itself. And for that, it is trained on thousands of images of zebrafish.


Listen to the full Episode on Spotify.