This dataset contains 4,029,374 images from 15 camera trapping projects in the the Snapshot Safari program. Short descriptions of individual projects are provided below, in the project descriptions section.
Labels are provided for 151 categories. The most common labels are “empty” (2,739,081 instances), “impala” (231,564 instances), and “zebra” (122,067 instances). Animal counts are provided for 1,322,468 of the category labels.
There are 1824 unique location IDs in the dataset, each representing a camera.
For questions about this data set, contact Sarah Huebner at the Smithsonian Institution.
This data set is released under the Community Data License Agreement (permissive variant).
Annotations (including species tags and unique location identifiers) are provided in COCO Camera Traps format.
For information about mapping this dataset’s categories to a common taxonomy, see this page.
Metadata is available here.
Images are available in the following cloud storage folders:
- gs://public-datasets-lila/snapshot-safari-2024-expansion (GCP)
- s3://us-west-2.opendata.source.coop/agentmorris/lila-wildlife/snapshot-safari-2024-expansion (AWS)
- https://lilawildlife.blob.core.windows.net/lila-wildlife/snapshot-safari-2024-expansion (Azure)
We recommend downloading images (the whole folder, or a subset of the folder) using gsutil (for GCP), aws s3 (for AWS), or AzCopy (for Azure). For more information about using gsutil, aws s3, or AzCopy, check out our guidelines for accessing images without using giant zipfiles.
If you prefer to download individual images via http, you can. For example, the thumbnail below appears in the metadata as:
KAR/KAR_S2/C01/C01_R2/KAR_S2_C01_R2_IMAG0210.JPG
This image can be downloaded directly from any of the following URLs (one for each cloud):
Having trouble downloading? Check out our FAQ.
It’s not typically necessary to break out images from individual Snapshot Safari projects for model training; i.e., if you want to train a model on images of elands, you probably just want all the images with elands. However, for some cross-validation scenarios it may be helpful to have some context for the individual projects, so in this section, we provide short descriptions of the projects that are represented in this dataset). The three-letter codes presented here for each project correspond to the three-letter prefixes used in image filenames; for example, the filename used above begins with “KAR”, which corresponds to the “Snapshot Karoo” project.
The Associated Private Nature Reserves are an alliance of privately owned reserves that border Kruger National Park and have removed boundary fences to allow ~150 mammal species more room to roam and forage. The camera trap grid in the APNR aligns with the Snapshot Kruger grid to provide an east-west transect across the mopaneveld and mixed broadleaf woodland sections of KNP.
Camdeboo National Park is located in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is one of the largest conservancies in the arid Nama Karoo ecoregion, which is dominated by low-shrubbed vegetation and rugged rock formations.
Niassa Special Reserve is located in northern Mozambique is recognized as a critical protected area and covers more than 42,000 km2, making it larger than Switzerland. Biodiversity surveys have revealed a species-rich and largely intact ecosystem of miombo woodlands, rivers, inselbergs, wetlands, and plains.
Enonkishu Conservancy is located in Kenya on the northern boundary of the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, and promotes the coexistence between wildife and livestock as an essential component of stability in the Mara landscaope.
Karoo National Park was established to preserve a representative samples of the arid Nama Karoo biome. The park features a distinctive topographical gradient due to the mountain range forming its northern boundary.
The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park stretches from the Namibian border across South Africa and into Botswana, covering a landscape commonly referred to as the Kalahari – an arid savanna.
Kruger National Park is one of the oldest nature reserves in Africa and home to nearly 150 mammal species, including all of the big cats and megaherbivore guild. The camera trap grid in Kruger comprises an east-west transect across the mopaneveld and mixed woodland sections of the park and connects with the grid in the APNR.
Leopard Ecology and Conservation is a non-profit organization working in Khutse Game Reserve, Botswana to understand the status and habitat needs of leopards and lions within and outside formal conservation areas in the Kalahari region.
Madikwe Game Reserve is home to the “Big Five” (lions, elephants, rhinoceros, leopards, and buffalo) as well as cheetahs and wild dogs. Around 10,000 mammals have been relocated there from South Africa national parks.
Home to the endangered Cape Mountain zebra, this park was created with the express purpose of saving this population. This has been a success with zebra numbers increasing steadily.
Pilanesberg National Park is situated close to Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa, making it highly accessible for visitors. It is situated in the ecologically rich transition zone between the Kalahari and Lowveld on top of an extinct volcano known as the Pilanesberg National Park Alkaline Ring Complex. It is one of the largest volcanic complexes of this type in the world, featuring rare rock types and formations.
Ruaha National Park is at the intersection of the Eastern African and Southern African eco-regions, making it a biodiversity hotspot. The greater Ruaha landscape holds around a tenth of the world’s lions, as well as large populations of wild dogs, cheetah, and other carnivores.
Snapshot Safari’s flagship project in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania has been collecting continuous camera trap data on lions and the entire wildlife assemblage since 2010. The grid of 175 cameras is located across the wooded and plains areas of the Serengeti, and provides opportunities to study animal behavior and interactions.
Molopo Game Reserve is located along the Botswanan border with South Africa in the latter’s North West Province and, owing to the relative scarcity of large predators in the area, is one of the few walkable protected areas in the nation.
Located in the eastern Kalahari bushveld of the Northern Cape province, Tswalu Kalahari Reserve is the largest privately-owned protected area in South Africa. The wildlife assemblage includes many cryptic animals such as pangolin, aardvark, and brown hyena.
MegaDetector results for all camera trap datasets on LILA are available here.
Information about mapping camera trap datasets to a common taxonomy is available here.
Posted by Dan Morris.
