The invention relates to a remote-area-oriented small-animal target detecting method. The small-animal target detecting method is based on multiple background differences and multiple-characteristic fusion. The remote-area-oriented small-animal target detecting method comprises the steps of detecting a small moving target in a video according to a multiple-background-difference method, and reducing the effect of a remote-area grass and wood movement; then extracting a Hu invariant moment feature of a target area, preliminarily screening a suspected small-animal target; and finally extracting the Haar-like characteristic of the area spatial gray scale of the suspected small-animal target, performing training and classification according to an Adaboost method, thereby detecting the small-animal target. The remote-area-oriented small-animal target detecting method according to the invention has functions of improving an environment adaption capability by means of a multiple-background-difference method and reducing a small-animal target detection false-alarm rate according to a target area characteristic and a spatial gray scale characteristic. The remote-area-oriented small-animal target detecting method can be widely applied used in an intelligent monitoring system.