The Behavior Video Sharing site is a free platform for sharing and viewing brief video clips of animal behavior. These videos can be a valuable resource for observers to help them reliably identify different behaviors. These videos are meant to support traditional text-based ethograms that operationally define behaviors.

Although text-based definitions can provide a general description of the behavior, different individuals may display the same behavior in slightly different ways. Some behaviors may also be rare and recognizing a behavior that hasn’t been observed before from only it’s text description can be challenging. In a retrospective review at Lincoln Park Zoo, only 25% of the behaviors on their ethograms occurred during live inter-observer reliability tests (Wark et al., 2021). This leaves a significant gap in traditional testing process and highlights the need for better training materials to prepare observers.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words (which means a video is worth a thousand words multiplied by the frame rate)! Anyone is welcome to share or access videos on the Behavior Video Sharing site. To get started, you’ll first need to sign up for Behavior Video Sharing, which is part of the broader Animal Data Sharing family of sites. After you sign up, you can start searching the database!.