How your social media posts can help behavioural ecologists understand wildlife
30 Oct 2024|Reut Vardi
- Research
In an increasingly digital world, the wealth of information generated online presents unprecedented opportunities for behavioural ecology and conservation research. While traditional field studies remain fundamental, they often face constraints of time, access and cost. Digital data, in the form of photos, videos, and audio files shared online, provide a powerful complement to these methods, allowing researchers to study animal behaviour at scales previously unimaginable.

By thoughtfully integrating online information with established research approaches, we can gain deeper insights into animal behaviour while fostering public engagement in research and biodiversity conservation. This could enhance our understanding of how animals adapt to our rapidly changing planet. In a recent publication1, together with colleagues from around Europe, Israel, and USA, we explored how we can use social media and other online platforms to study behavioural ecology.
Animal behaviour has fascinated scientists for generations. In the 1960s, Niko Tinbergen revolutionised this field by identifying four essential questions that guide our research: What triggers a specific behaviour (causation)? How does it develop as an animal grows (ontogeny)? How has it evolved across generations and species (evolution)? And how does it help animals survive and reproduce (function)? Today’s digital age brings powerful new tools to help answer these questions and opens new avenues for ecological and behavioural research.
- Causation: Digital data is revolutionising how we understand what triggers animal behaviour in the wild. From storks cooling themselves on hot days2 to hermit crabs adapting to use plastic caps as shells3, online videos and images are helping scientists document fascinating behavioural adaptations. These digital observations can be particularly valuable for studying rare or unexpected behaviours that might otherwise go unrecorded. When combined with environmental data like temperature records or human mobility patterns, these data sources can help us understand how animals are adapting to our changing world. The use of digital data makes global multi-city comparisons possible and enables a better understanding of urbanisation effects on species behaviour. It can further assist in documenting the first arrivals of species to an area and monitoring the spread of invasive species, their behaviour, and interactions with native species. While traditional laboratory and field studies remain essential for understanding the internal drivers of animal behaviour, the wealth of online data is opening new windows into how animals respond to environmental challenges – insights that are increasingly crucial.
- Ontogeny: As animals develop from birth to adulthood, their behaviours often change dramatically – a process called ontogeny. Digital data can help track these fascinating transformations in unprecedented detail. For example, through online photos and videos, researchers have discovered how young martial eagles learn to hunt more agile prey as they age4, and how grouper fish move to deeper waters as they mature5. Live-streaming cameras at bird nests can offer exciting research opportunities, allowing scientists to watch in real-time how chicks develop their calls and songs, and how these developmental patterns might differ between different habitats, for example, urban and rural environments.
- Evolution: The digital age has opened new windows into evolution, with online archives spanning decades revealing surprising adaptations across species and locations. For instance, citizen scientists uploading images and recordings have helped document unexpected behaviours like widespread tool use in parrots6 and previously unknown predator-prey relationships between birds and bats7. These vast digital collections can be valuable for studying how animals are evolving in human-altered environments. By combining these observations with evolutionary family trees, scientists can better understand how behaviours evolved and spread across species.
- Function: Digital data is also revolutionising our understanding of how behaviour helps animals survive and reproduce. Live-streaming underwater cameras have captured remarkable partnerships, such as small fish seeking protection near sharks to avoid other predators8. Meanwhile, scientists are using social media data to track how climate change affects breeding patterns in various species9, and mining Wikipedia page views to understand migration timing in salmon10. These digital observations are helping researchers understand not just how animals behave, but why these behaviours matter for their survival in our rapidly changing world.
The digital revolution brings both opportunities and challenges to behavioural ecology research. While online data can’t replace traditional field studies or provide insights into internal mechanisms like hormones and genetics, it offers unprecedented access to behavioural observations across space and time. We must, however, remain mindful of the biases inherent in digital data – from the overrepresentation of charismatic species to the potential skewing effects of search algorithms and viral content. Ethical considerations are also crucial, as we need to ensure that data collection doesn’t harm wildlife or encourage risky human-animal interactions. The future lies in thoughtfully combining digital innovations with traditional research methods. This synthesis, enhanced by machine-learning tools, advances our scientific understanding while also creating powerful new opportunities for public engagement in conservation – essential for protecting biodiversity in light of global changes.
References:
1 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002793
2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99296-8
3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723075885
4 https://academic.oup.com/condor/article/121/1/duy015/5318747
5 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972036201X
6 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.14.553302v1
7 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mam.12060
8 https://peerj.com/articles/11164/
9 https://esj-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1007/s11284-017-1466-z
10 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.3000146
Figure 1 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002793
Category: Research
Author

Reut
Vardi
Reut is an ecologist and conservation scientist. Prior to joining the University of Oxford and St Edmund Hall, she was a Postdoctoral researcher at Tel Aviv University under the Alexander and Eva Lester and the George S. Wise post-doctoral fellowships. She completed her PhD from Ben-Gurion University, exploring the effects of environmental variability on animal behaviour.