Processing patterns

A staff member at a national park is helping to tag Siberian tigers in China, report Liu Mingtai and Zhou Huiying in Changchun.

Duan Lianru spends several hours sitting in her office in Hunchun, Jilin province, daily, seeing hundreds of photos of the Siberian tiger on her computer.

"It seems a little boring, but I really enjoy the work, which makes an intangible connection between me and the big cat," says the 36-year-old monitor from the research monitoring center of Hunchun bureau of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park.

The park stretches across the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang.

Duan is responsible for identifying the tigers according to the patterns on their fur and giving them exclusive serial numbers — something like an identity card.

"The pattern on each Siberian tiger is as unique as a human fingerprint," she says. "My work is distinguishing different individuals according to the position, length, width, color and shape of the patterns."

However, 10 years ago, Duan couldn't have imagined that there would be any connection with the big cat in her life. Born in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang province, Duan chose computer science as her major at Northeast Petroleum University in the province's Daqing city.