In Korea, there is a unique frog called “Boreal digging frog(맹꽁이)”.
These frogs live in dark ground and come out of the ground in rainy summer night to lay eggs.
They do not harm people, eat mosquitoes and insects, and hide in dark places.
However, in Korea, as urbanization has progressed for decades, numerous habitats for these frogs have been destroyed.
They did not harm people, but humans kill and hurt these frogs.😢
Recently, thousands of boreal digging frogs were killed in the building construction site near my home.
Their habitat was destroyed by an excavator, and I wanted to do something but couldn't save them.
I contacted the Korean government to solve this problem, but they told me another issue.
They do not have the right to stop a construction on private land, and all they can do is move the frogs.
However, it is very difficult to migrate frogs because the frogs only come out of the ground at night, and they are very small and buried with dirt, making it very difficult to find them with human eyes.
As you can see in the picture, the boreal digging frog hides in the dirt and is very difficult to find because it only appears in the late night.
Then I started thinking about how AI can help them find boreal digging frogs.
At first I thought of using an infrared camera, but I gave up this method because I remembered that the amphibians are metamorphic animals.
So, I have to find the frog from the normal image, but it will also not be easy for AI to find the boreal digging frog that is difficult for humans to find.
Besides, there was no image data, so I had to collect photos myself.
And here's a video of how I created an AI to detect boreal digging frogs using Deep Block.
Eventually, I haven't been able to collect a lot of images, and this AI may not work well in late night for finding boreal digging frogs.
However, I think this attempt is a good first step because I found that the AI model can detect the frog with dirt.
I will try to improve this AI model in the future.
For coexistence with nature, it would be good to reduce the number of unnecessary building constructions.
I wish the dead frogs to rest in peace, and I will take the lead in protecting boreal digging frogs in Korea. :)
