Introduction:

Food selection is a central concept in wildlife herbivore studies. Different non-invasive techniques have commonly been used to determine diet composition from faecal samples, including epidermal microhistological analysis. This method can provide reliable quantitative data through the identification of plant cell structures visualized under an optical microscope. However, significant expertise in microscopic identification is required and the method is also highly time-consuming. Since microhistological analysis is based on pattern recognition, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) could be applied to the study of herbivore diets for labour intensive pattern recognition tasks.