🐒 Awesome Computational Primatology

This repository contains the corpus of projects at the intersection of deep learning and non-human primatology since around the time AlexNet was published (~2012). This repo is intended for papers that provide novel approaches or applications in computational primatology. We occasionally include datasets which contain both primate and non-primate animals. Contributions and edits welcome!

By compiling and highlighting this growing literature, we hope it will inspire future researchers to open-source their own models and data to advance the field.

Contribute to the List!

We welcome contributions from the community! If you know of a relevant paper or project:

1. 🍴 Fork this repository
2. ✏️ Add your paper to the table in chronological order
3. 🔍 Preview your changes: python scripts/dev-preview.py
4. 📤 Submit a pull request

Features for contributors:

• 🔗 Automatic link checking
• 🌐 Live preview of your changes
• 📊 Auto-generated website updates
• ✅ Format validation

Read our Contributing Guidelines for detailed instructions!

By sharing your datasets and models, you contribute to advancing primatology and enable reproducible research.

Topic Legend

Label	Topic
PD	Primate Detection
BPE	Body Pose Estimation
FD	Face Detection
FLE	Facial Landmark Estimation
FR	Face Recognition and/or Re-Identification
FAC	Facial Action Coding / Units
HD	Hand Detection
HPE	Hand Pose Estimation
BR	Behavior Recognition / Understanding / Modeling
AM	Avatar / Mesh
SI	Species Identification
RL	Reinforcement Learning
O	Other

Legend for "Model?" Column

• [Yes](link): Code + models available
• [Code only](link): Repository available, but no pre-trained models
• [No](link): Repository with general information, but no functional code or models
• "No": No repository or models provided

Projects

Year	Paper	Topic	Animal	Model?	Data?	Image/Video Count
2025	PrimateFace	FD, FLE, FR, FAC	Cross-genus	Yes	Yes	200K+ images
2025	Iashina et al.	FD,FR	Chimp	Yes	No	N/A
2024	Paulet et al.	FR	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2024	PanAf20K	PD, BR	Apes	No	Yes	20k
2024	Gris et al.	FD, O	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2024	MacAction	AM	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2024	LabGym	BR	Macaque	Yes	Yes	N/A
2024	Cheng et al.	BR	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2024	PRIMAT (Vogg et al.)	2D BPE	Cross-species	No	No	N/A
2024	Xing et al.	O	Marmoset	No	No	N/A
2024	Menegas et al.	BR	Marmoset	No	No	N/A
2023	GorillaVision	FD, FR	Gorilla	Yes	No	832
2023	Abbaspoor, Rahman et al.	3D BPE	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2023	Mimura et al.	BR	Macaque, Marmoset	No	No	N/A
2023	Schofield et al.	FD, FR	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2023	Yang et al.	PD	Great Ape	No	No	N/A
2023	ASBAR	BR	Chimp, Gorilla	Yes	Yes	5,440 labels
2023	DeepWild	2D BPE	Chimp, Bonobo	Yes	Upon request	N/A
2023	Kaneko et al.	3D BM	Marmoset	No	No	N/A
2023	Matsumoto et al.	3D BM	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2023	ChimpAct	2D BPE, FR, BR	Chimp	Yes	Yes	160,500
2023	OpenMonkeyChallenge	2D BPE	Cross-species	No	Yes	111,529
2023	Pillai et al.	PD	Cross-Species	No	No	N/A
2023	Reddy et al.	PD	Cross-species	No	No	N/A
2023	Bala et al.	3D BPE	Cross-species	No	No	N/A
2023	Brookes et al.	BR	Apes	No	No	N/A
2022	Ngo et al.	BR	Marmoset	No	No	N/A
2022	Brachiation	RL	Gibbon	Yes	No	N/A
2022	SIPEC	2D BPE, FR, BR	Macaque	Some	Upon request	N/A
2022	Ueno et al.	FR	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2021	Brookes & Burghardt	FR	Gorilla	No	Yes	>5,000
2021	Bain et al.	BR	Chimp	No	Some	N/A
2021	OpenApePose	2D BPE	Cross-species	No	Yes	71,868
2021	MacaquePose	2D BPE	Macaque	Yes	Yes	13,000
2021	GreatApe Dictionary	Data	Chimp	No	Upon request	N/A
2021	Negrete et al.	2D BPE	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2020	Kumar & Shingala	PD	Langur	No	No	N/A
2020	Sakib & Burghardt	BR	Chimp	Yes	Yes: Labeled Pan African	180,000
2020	OpenMonkeyStudio	3D BPE	Macaque	Upon request	Yes	195,228
2020	Tri-A	FD, FR	41 species	No	Yes	102,399
2020	Sanakoyeu et al.	AM	Chimp	Kind of	No	N/A
2020	EthoLoop	3D BPE	Lemur	No	Upon request	N/A
2019	Bain et al.	PD, FD, FR	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2019	Schofield et al.	FD, FR	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2019	Yang et al.	PD	Chimp	No	Yes: Labeled Pan African	180,000
2019	Labuguen et al.	2D BPE	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2018	Sinha, Agarwal et al.	PD	Cross-species	No	No	N/A
2018	Deb et al.	FR	Cross-species	No	No	N/A
2018	Witham	FLE	Macaque	Yes	Yes	4,000
2018	Labuguen et al.	PD	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2017	LemurFaceID	FD, FR	Lemur	No	Yes	462
2017	Brust et al.	FD, FR	Gorilla	No	No	N/A
2016	Crunchant et al.	FD	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2016	Nakamura et al.	3D BM	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2016	Freytag et al.	FR	Chimp	No	Yes	6,486
2014	Ballesta et al.	3D, O	Macaque	No	No	N/A
2013	Loos & Ernst	FD, FR	Chimp	No	For purchase	6,522
2012	Loos & Pfitzer	FR	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2012	Loos & Ernst	FD, Fr	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2011	Loos et al.	FR	Chimp	No	No	N/A
2011	Ernst & Küblbeck	FD, SI	Chimp, Gorilla	No	No	N/A

Datasets

Primate-Specific Datasets

Year	Dataset Name	Description	Species	Size	Availability
2025	PrimateFace	Face analysis	Cross-species	200K+ images	Public
2024	PanAf20K	Detection and behavior	Apes	20,000 videos	Public
2023	OpenMonkeyChallenge	2D pose estimation	Cross-species	111,529 images	Public
2021	GreatApe Dictionary	Behavioral annotations	Chimps	N/A	Upon request
2021	MacaquePose	2D pose estimation	Macaque	13,000 images	Public
2021	OpenApePose	2D pose estimation	Cross-species	71,868 images	Public
2020	OpenMonkeyStudio	3D pose estimation	Macaque	195,228 frames	Public
2020	Tri-A	Face detection/recognition	41 species	102,399 images	Public
2018	Macaque Faces	Facial landmarks	Macaque	4,000 images	Public
2017	LemurFaceID	Face recognition	Lemur	462 images	Public
2016	Chimpanzee Faces	Face recognition	Chimp	6,486 images	Public

Dataset with both primate and non-primate data

Year	Paper	Topic	Animal	Model?	Data?	Image/Video Count
2023	MammalNet	BR	Cross-species	Yes	Yes	18k videos
2022	Animal Kingdom	2D BPE, BR	Cross-species	No	Yes	N/A
2022	APT-36K	2D BPE	Cross-species	No	Yes	< 36K
2021	AP10k	2D BPE	Cross-species	Yes	Yes	10,015 (675 primates)
2021	LiftPose3D	3D BPE	Cross-species	Yes	No	N/A
2020	AnimalWeb	FD, FLE	Cross-species	No	Yes	21,921

Reviews

Year	Tag	Topic	Animal
2024	Vogg et al.	Review	All
2021	Hayden et al.	Review	All

Related projects

• Macaque Face Avatars

  • Siebert et al., 2020
  • Murphy & Leopold 2019

• Comparing macaque face tracking to mice Tlaie et al., 2024