Tiny AI-Based Bio-Loggers Revealing the Interesting Bits of a Bird's Day
Published:07 Mar.2024 Source:Osaka University
Have you ever wondered what wildlife animals do all day? Documentaries offer a glimpse into their lives, but animals under the watchful eye do not do anything interesting. The true essence of their behaviors remains elusive. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a camera that allows us to capture these behaviors. Infrequent behaviors, such as diving into the water for food, can lead to new insights or even new directions in research.
Video cameras attached to the animal are an excellent way to observe behavior. Either the video only records until the battery runs out, in which case you might miss the rare behavior, or you use a larger, heavier battery, which is not suitable for the animal. To avoid having to make this choice for the wild seabirds under study, the team use low-power sensors, such as accelerometers, to determine when an unusual behavior is taking place. The camera is then turned on, the behavior is recorded, and the camera powers off until the next time.
This approach, which overcomes the battery-life limitation of most bio-loggers, will help us understand the behaviors of wildlife that venture into human-inhabited areas. It will also enable animals in extreme environments inaccessible to humans to be observed. This means that many other rare behaviors -- from sweet-potato washing by Japanese monkeys to penguins feeding on jellyfish -- can now be studied in the future.