China has developed an app that allows conservationists to identify individual pandas using facial recognition technology.

Researchers have also built a database with over 120,000 images and 10,000 video clips of giant pandas to allow them to correctly identify individual animals.

There are thought to be less than 1,900 giant pandas left in the wild, living in three provinces in central China. They live in remote, mountainous areas and are hard for conservationists to keep track of.

"The app and database will help us gather more precise and well-rounded data on the population, distribution, ages, gender ratio, birth and deaths of wild pandas, who live in deep mountains and are hard to track," Chen Peng, a researcher at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, told state news agency Xinhua.

This is not the first time facial recognition has been used on non-human subjects. Last year US app Finding Rover claimed to have an accuracy rate of 98pc in matching images of lost pets to found and rescued animals.

A cat feeder made by Italian company Volta and exhibited at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this year also identifies the correct pet and refuses to open for interlopers such as foxes or rival felines.