A new window into the secret lives of animals
To better understand the lives of animals – for example, their social systems, migratory behaviour, or interactions with the environment –detailed data on how animals behave in their natural habitats are needed. To collect such data, researchers from the Cluster of Excellence “Collective Behaviour” at the University of Konstanz have developed the mobile camera system “3D-SOCS” (short for “3D Synchronized Outdoor Camera System”) and used it for studying wild birds.
Using two or more synchronized cameras, 3D-SOCS enables precise, markerless 3D tracking of the postures and movements of multiple wild birds simultaneously. Thus, the system bridges the gap between controlled, high-resolution lab studies and ecologically valid but often less detailed field observations. In addition, it enables automated monitoring of wild animals’ body or health data.
3D-SOCS is an open platform. In the spirit of open science, all hardware plans and software pipelines are freely available and can be adapted to different study systems and species.
All software pipelines and hardware plans for 3D-SOCS are available for free download in the developers' GitHub directory.
The article on the method (doi: 10.1111/2041-210x.70051) has been published open access in Methods in Ecology Evolution. The belonging peer review reports are also freely available on this page.
Sample data sets for executing the code, bounding box and keypoint annotations, and the reproduction data set for the journal article are openly available at DRYAD (doi: 10.5061/dryad.vq83bk429).