A Comprehensive Survey of Animal Identification: Exploring Data Sources, AI Advances, Classification Obstacles and the Role of Taxonomy

With the rapid development of entity recognition technology, animal recognition has gradually become essential in modern society, supporting labour‐intensive agriculture and animal husbandry tasks. Severe problems such as maintaining biodiversity can also benefit from animal identification technology. However, certain invasive recognition systems have resulted in permanent harm to animals, while noninvasive identification methods also exhibit certain drawbacks. This paper conducts a systematic literature review (SLR), presenting a comprehensive overview of various animal recognition technologies and their applications. Specifically, it examines methodologies such as deep learning, image processing and acoustic analysis used for different animal characteristics and identification purposes. The contribution of machine learning to animal feature extraction is highlighted, emphasising its significance for animal taxonomy and wild species monitoring. Additionally, this review addresses the challenges and limitations of current technologies, including data scarcity, model accuracy and computational requirements, and suggests opportunities for future research to overcome these obstacles.