Seeing wildlife behavior in a new way: Novel utilization of computer vision for focal reptile videography behavior study

Abstract

AbstractTechnology has the potential to assist and directly address ecological topics. Our study compared efficiency and efficacy of foreground‐detection computer vision and manual review methods for understanding behavior, natural history, and ecology of green pit vipers. Between 2015 and 2020 at the Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve in Thailand, 18,871 scans (pictures and timelapse recordings) and 1,507 minutes of continuous videos were recorded for 6 adult female, big‐eyed pit vipers (Trimeresurus macrops). MotionMeerkat, an open source computer vision tool for finding ecological events in long video, appeared to be less efficient and overestimated presence of behaviors. Our study suggested that foreground‐detection computer vision methods, exemplified by the program MotionMeerkat, can be free and open‐source as well as easy to learn and use, but may not be as time efficient or fully address the complexity of ecological topics compared to review of images by human observers.