High-throughput Ethology

We have several projects in which we exploit the advantages of state-of-the-art technology (miniature custom made logger modules, computer vision, supercomputer cluser data mining, drones etc.) for the purpose of gaining new substantial knowledge in collective motion, collective decision making and collective behaviour of animals. We design and build our own gadgets and software components for the data acquisition and data analysis process and work together with ethologists to be able to answer the biologically most relevant and exciting questions.

List of projects with published results:

• complex social structure of rats
• efficient group search of rats
• context dependent hierarchies of pigeons
• coordinated behaviour analysis of pigeon flocks
• automatized behaviour analysis of dogs

We are using a custom computer-vision based software framework for the identification and long-term tracking of unique individuals. All related code is open source at github.com/vasarhelyi.

We also developed a miniature (13g) GPS logger that was put on 30 pigeons simultaneously to record their trajectories.

If you are excited about using these tools and methods, please contact!