Scientists convert former barn into cutting-edge animal behavior lab

Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB) and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have converted a former barn right into a cutting-edge technology lab for complex behavioral evaluation. In it, they will now study the intricate behaviour of animal groups. The barn also served as a prototype for the most important swarm behaviour lab on the University of Konstanz: the Imaging Hangar.

A significant limitation in behavioural research is that scientists can either study animals under highly-controlled, yet often unrealistically simplified and small, environments within the lab, or in largely uncontrolled conditions within the wild. This has limited our ability to check many facets of behaviour, including collective behaviour-;the movements and interactions amongst animals that underlie their complex social lives. What is required to handle this? First, a spot with a lot of space. Second, state-of-the-art technology.

Each can be found in an 18th-century barn on the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Möggingen near Konstanz and now within the Imaging Hangar, a hall the scale of a gymnasium on the University of Konstanz. Each labs are used to closely examine the group behaviour of animals. To accomplish that in a multidimensional way, researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour on the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have developed a tool called SMART-BARN.

SMART-BARN is an acronym for Scalable Multimodal Arena for Real-time Tracking Behaviour of Animals in large numbers. “It’s a brand new tool that permits studying complex behaviour traits of a person or interactions between groups of animals like insects, birds, or mammals”, says Hemal Naik. Along with Máté Nagy, Co-Speaker of the Cluster, Iain Couzin, and colleagues developed SMART-BARN. The team was very interdisciplinary: Biologists, physicists, engineers and computer scientists developed it together.

Máté Nagy explains the tool further: “We’re using high throughput measurement techniques like optical and acoustic tracking, with which we are able to study the precise 3D position and posture of animals and calculate their field of view”. Users of the brand new facility may have the pliability to perform different experimental paradigms by leveraging the modular nature of the system.

Why scale matters

“SMART-BARN is designed to boost the dimensions of typical indoor behavioural experiments by way of experimental volume and measured behaviour traits and group sizes”, computer scientist Hemal Naik says and adds: “Because of this users can measure previously unseen behaviour repertoire because animals have more room.” The ability can – depending on the scale of the animals – host 100s of animals concurrently and extend the potential of experiments to novel species typically not studied in indoor environments. “The truth is, we’ve now scaled this to work with many hundreds of animals”, adds Couzin, “We recently conducted a study within the Imaging Hangar where we tracked 10,000 plague locusts. This could have been unimaginable without our SMART-BARN technology.”

How SMART-BARN will be used

Up to now, SMART-BARN was used inside different experimental use cases involving subjects as diverse as pigeons, starlings, moth, bats, and humans. Naik is delighted because: “The ability is shaping essential latest interdisciplinary collaborations.” He continues: “For instance, SMART-BARN offers the flexibility to trace 3D gaze and posture of birds in a bunch of ten or more while maintaining their identity. This method is getting used by researchers to explore the role of gaze in decision making.” The identical technique is utilized by computer scientists to design novel computer vision and AI based algorithms facilitating 3D tracking of animals without attaching any markers to them. “Our method has resulted in a good larger system within the Imaging Hangar on the University of Konstanz to trace swarms of robots or hundreds of insects”, says Iain Couzin.

Máté Nagy says: “In a nutshell, the scope of its applications is just limited by our ability to provide you with ideas of experimentation.” The team imagines the power to be a collaborative space where researchers from all around the globe can contribute to the exploration of behavioural questions. Subsequently, the team invites researchers the world over to attach with them and plan experiments.