Yeah, I think it might be premature to try and put labels on behavior and create datasets label as behavior datasets if you get what I mean. Just getting the visibility where you didn't have it make's a big difference.

If you can detect animals from further away then animals will be less wary of the cameras. That's where the thermal tech is very interesting.

I have a thermal detection system monitoring wolves that has been in the field running continuously on solar power for more than 8 months now. Essentially it can stay out there indefinitely and not need a battery change until the battery is broken.

I think what you are saying above would apply to most of the existing systems. I'm not advocating an existing approach here.

That solar and thermal setup is awesome for solving the battery issues, but doesn't night tracking introduce a major bottleneck for behaviour? I've used dual-system gear before that records in both thermal and visible light, and even with continuous power, catching micro-expressions at night is a massive challenge. Without an IR flash, visible sensors suffer from heavy motion blur and grain in the dark, erasing fine details like ear positions or gazes. But if you use a flash, you risk spooking them.

Plus, even if the camera can see from 'great distances,' the animal’s home range is massive. Intelligent or territorial animals like wolves notice any foreign object dropped into their home ground, even from far away. Whether it's lingering human scent or a slight lens reflection, if they feel like their environment has been encroached on, they won't act naturally anyway. It really feels like an endless trade-off between getting uninterrupted visibility and getting actual, unskewed behavioural resolution.

The thermal camera can catch micro expressions much better than what you would catch with a flash if the animal is close enough and the resolution is sufficient. If that is a important enough. That been my experience with the videos we have captured.  We also have 1280x1024 thermal. There is typical no motion blur with that.

As to how an animal would act under continuous surveillance with one of our cameras I cannot say. That experiment has never been done with our gear before. There are variety of fixed lens available. The lens I’ve shown are general purpose reasonably wide angle lens. But if you wanted to study behavior from much further away there are lens to observe from very far. They are just expensive of course.

The modules we use have impressive onboard image processing that really bring out the details. Unlike ones I’ve seen before.

Have a look at the videos on our channel and see what you think. The earliest video on the channel is in 1280x1024.

https://youtube.com/@wildlifesecurityinnovations

The thermal modules that we use with our system are quite new and I've used a lot of thermal gear over the years and none had images as good as these ones. As to suitability for behavioral research I can see that there is much more detail available with this gear than what I see with flashing traditional gear. But I'm not a behavioral researcher in the field. So the suitability would ultimately be up to the researcher themselves. But never before was there a 1280x1024 thermal camera available for use in behavioral studies, so the suitability thereof has never been evaluated before.

What resolution, age was the thermal gear you used before ? And what distance were you filming at ?

I'll definitely check out your channel! To be honest, I'm much more on the animal science and behaviour side of things than the hardware engineering side, so I can't speak to the exact specs of the older gear I've seen, but having that high of a resolution without motion blur definitely sounds like a massive leap forward.

The way I see it, the trickiest part about any remote tech, no matter how high-res it gets, is that you can never truly measure the 'avoidance factor' from behind the lens. If a cautious animal senses a foreign object in its home ground and decides to completely steer clear of that zone, the camera will never catch it. You only ever get data on the animals that don't mind the camera, which can unintentionally skew the behavioural picture.

It’s the classic observer dilemma. It’s why some of the most famous animal behaviourists in history only truly understood nuanced behaviour by actually embedding themselves in the environment and becoming part of the pack, rather than relying solely on a fixed lens. But as a tool to bridge the gap where humans can't go, it's definitely exciting to see how much clearer the visibility is getting!

I would love to have feedback from a behavioral researcher. When I made the comment, I was mostly thinking about macro behavior. I haven't dived into the requirements for micro research, but it sure is interesting.

The area where I hope to make the most impact is in human-wildlife conflict mitigation. I would be thrilled if it turned out to be useful to behavior analysis as well.

Occasionally we get a close close up of an animal. Such as this hare. I would love to know whether in you consider it contains sufficient detail for behavioral purposes.

Hare closeup in Thermal

And here, even better

Ring side view of a hare close up

Over time, the animals do get comfortable with our gear. I'm sure that a bird built a nest under the panel recently. I just haven't been out there in a while to check, but it keeps flying up from below in the area. We have a visible view of that.

Baby bird living under a solar panel

Most of our wolf videos are on our other channel. Here the wolves indeed were very wary of the gear at first. Mostly they would glance up, however at first they would have been looking at the camera, but over time I think that most of the time they were looking across the field to the road on the other side.

We also have a 4K ultra low light camera that we were lighting with invisible (940nm) lighting. This we have also recording continuously.

Wolf with 4K ultra low light camera
 
We custom design all weather enclosures for out thermal modules. They are design such if you wanted you could remove them and use them in a stealth custom made enclosure of your own. They are USB based modules, so the main recording unit can be hidden away from the camera. Here is a photo of a 640x512 unit

There's a camera mounting fitting underneath so you can can ball joint camera mounts to mount them on and only a little bit sticks up into view.
 
The 1280x1024 resolution module is a bit bigger