Researchers from the University of Cambridge have created an artificial intelligence system that uses five different facial expressions to diagnose if a sheep is in pain. It can also estimate the severity of the pain.

The research, which is being presented at a conference in Washington D.C. on Thursday, could improve sheep well-being -- and help in the early diagnosis and treatment of painful conditions in other animals like horses and rats.

The new system, which uses machine learning, can detect different parts of a sheep's face and compares them with the standardized measurement tool developed by veterinarians for diagnosing pain.

The researchers trained their model using about 500 photographs of sheep. It could estimate pain levels with about 80% accuracy in early tests.

More at CNN.