Official site and user guidance
Welcome! We’re all about classifying animal behaviour and cataloguing observations.
The study of the mechanisms, development, evolution and function of behaviour is called Ethology. Behaviour classification is generally a typological ordering system1. In this project, we are attempting to tease out some order from the, “almost chaotic diversity,” of behaviour. We do this first by classifying its activities. (This is the more observable component of ethology, such as swimming). Second, we classify its functional-contexts. (This is the tip of the function iceberg, where the context may allow reasonable inferences, such as escape). Third, we catalogue a range of dispositions which can be realized in particular behaviours, but are not themselves behaviours. (These are akin to tendencies or restrictions, such as the disposition among Hummingbirds to use a pitching flap pattern when hovering.)
On our SCOPING page, you can find out more about our situation assessment, including the need for, and history of the project.
Having undergone a closed, primordial development phase, the ACTAN project is now open for Alpha testing and redesign. Those interested in animal behaviour, and who are willing to contribute directly, are invited to collaborate. Sister projects are also being developed to test the use of labelling developed here, for annotating searchable repositories of animal behaviour records, most notably at iNaturalist. Collaborators are also being sought, who are able to test and extend these sister projects to their own records in various repositories, such as xeno-canto.
If you would like to collaborate, check out the section: Can I contribute?
This ontology is a tool designed and maintained by and for amateur animal behaviour watchers. It provides us with a system for classifying what could potentially be seen, heard, felt, or otherwise tangibly discerned by us. It can also help us to share knowledge with each other. For some of us, it could extend the scope of natural observation beyond taxonomy. For others, it may even replace taxonomy as our main observational paradigm, with taxonomy having the supplementary role. In other words, ‘collecting’ behaviours.
A secondary use case is that of professional researchers into animal behaviour. This ontology may not always be consistent with the most current academic thinking. But it can be used to build bridges between different interpretations or labels, as well as between ‘citizens’ and ‘scientists’. Hobbyists can use the labels to annotate publicly accessible artefacts (photos, recordings, videos, etc) as Instances of behaviour. This may then assist professionals in searching for examples of unusual behaviour, or extensions of known behaviour to new animal taxa.
An ontology contains a formal classification of terminology in a domain that provides textual and machine readable definitions, and defines the relationships between terms. An ontology is a terminology, but a terminology is not (necessarily) an ontology.
A reference ontology is meant to serve a general purpose, providing terms for some domain of science. We can compare it to a textbook. An application ontology is meant to serve a specific purpose, limited to a particular project or institution, but often crossing several domains. An application ontology is likely to include terms from several reference ontologies. Reference ontologies focus almost exclusively on universals, while application ontologies are more likely to include terms for particulars.
This is an editable reference ontology for animal behaviours. It defines, labels, and interconnects potentially discernible actions, functional contexts, and dispositions. Using scientific references, it attempts to provide an internally consistent framework for classifying assertions which have been made about behaviours.
This is not a reference for potentially maladaptive behaviours, and excludes so-called abnormal, aberrant, deficient, pathological, diseased, phenotypic, or impaired behaviour. We acknowledge that some acute stress-related behaviours are adaptive and so include them, but that chronic stress leads to maladaptive or compensatory behaviours, which we therefore do not include.
Similarly, we are not examining individual variations in behaviour, even sustained ones such as those included in a personality.
Even more particularly, we are not describing specific individuals, except as Instances for illustration and typing.
You use the ontology’s labels to annotate your own behaviour observations (sometimes called artefacts, e.g. one of your photos, sound recordings, or video clips). To find the right label, you need to look in the behaviour branch hierarchy. You might be able to work your own way through a particular sub-branch to what you are looking for. Or you might want to try searching for a word you think is in the ontology somewhere. It could be a label or a synonym. Bear in mind that some behaviours are not only listed with a parent class, but also as part of another behaviour. Understand too, that some of what we call dispositions have sometimes been referred to as behaviours. So you might come at what you are looking for from different routes.
NB: You should not label observations using dispositions - these are only here to aid behaviour identification.
Only in rare cases do we label composite behaviours. (This is usually if they have a unique term, or if they are synergistic and not merely additive). In other words, if you wish to label a co-occurent set of behaviours, label each one of them.
Remember that much is missing from the ontology and you may need to offer edits to existing entries, or new terms. If you want to improve the ontology, make sure you understand the section, Can I contribute? Then tuck into the page about EDITING.
NB: You may offer edits to this Introduction or the Editing page too, although anything but typos in the Editing page may need some debate before being adopted by us all.
The Active Animal’s ontology structure and edit history is saved as a project in Stanford University’s WebProtégé server. In this Alpha development phase, it is only visible to shared users who are accredited as collaborators.
WebProtégé allows collaborators to mutually edit the ontology (even simultaneously if needed). A download of the current WebProtégé ACTAN project file (owl/rdf/xml), including all edits but no history, can also be viewed in more detail using the standalone desktop Protégé or other ontology software. But merging offline edits is not encouraged, because of the risk of overwriting someone else’s online changes.
In the Beta phase, we hope to provide an easier tool for users to locate appropriate labels for applying to their own observation records. By the end of the Alpha phase, we will regularly upload versions to Bioportal and this will provide an interim search solution to users without access to the WebProtégé project.
Unless the Neuro-Behavioural Ontology (NBO) is resurrected or a better replacement is created, we hope that our ontology will one day be accepted as a reference ontology in the OBO Foundry ontology community.
This project does not provide any storage for artefacts. Behavioural records are located in repositories in the form of example observations (ontologically referred to as Instances). iNaturalist provides the world’s largest open data source of animal observations. Alongside this are a number of other open access online repositories for behavioural artefacts, such as xeno-canto. Most of these allow users to annotate or tag their uploads. Providing good labels for these annotations is our goal.
The Active Animals (AA) project at iNaturalist is a way for animal behavioural records to be aggregated systematically there. Our ontology here provides the systematic source labels for the project’s basic Observation Fields there. The AA project is also in its Alpha stage and interested collaborators are encouraged to message the project’s own administration there.
Restricted access resources are unlikely to be referenced by the ontology, except in justifiable cases. These may involve affordable entry or membership fees (e.g. behavioural artefacts like tools, nests, or fossils in museums, or videos which may be sourced in libraries, such as natural history documentaries on DVD). Some public animal behaviour resources also store accessible behavioural artefacts, such as Elephant Voices.
We very much hope so!
This ontology aims to be participatory, transparent and accountable. In practice, this means first of all that a wide range of people can freely use, contribute ideas, edit, and even manage the ontology. Secondly, we use openly accessible software including the free WebProtégé platform. Thirdly, visible comments and an accessible change history allow users to review changes to the ontology.
Collaborators are expected to make active contributions, either in the ontology’s engineering/software support, or in its database/editing curation, or stress-testing against their own observations. Consultants who only offer advice could play a key role, and will be directly recruited by a manager. Impromptu consultants will be thanked but invited to directly implement their own advice.
If advice about an issue is openly solicited by an active collaborator, advisory comments (without further commitment) are welcome. This may even be preferred to diving straight into an edit, particularly for big changes. Big changes may be reverted by a manager if inadequate prior community discussion has occured.
During the Alpha development phase, there will be a single manager (Ditch Townsend). Collaborators may be invited by a manager, or recommended to a manager by an editor. Known collaborators may be invited by a manager to be editors. Unknown collaborators may be invited to be commenters until they become sufficiently known to be invited to be an editor. The collaboration team will be limited in size.
During the Beta development phase, a significant number of positions will be available for new editors. Also for more commenters, provided they test the ontology against their own observations. During this phase, a mutually acceptable participatory organisational structure will be set up and tested. But it will remain advisory to the manager, who will arrange for a deputy to also have management privileges.
Only in the open, final phase will the ontology be fully open. This stage will also mark an accountable and participatory organisation and management structure, including a mechanism for changing leadership.
Feel free to look over our EDITING guidelines.
In 1963, a key figure in the world of Ethology, Niko Tinbergen, wrote:
The variety of behaviours found in the animal kingdom is so vast… even with the most economic procedures the amount of description to be done will long remain very large, so large in fact that we shall soon have to resort to a policy of filing descriptive material in libraries or archives (including film libraries) rather than publishing it in the usual journals.
Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für tierpsychologie, 20(4), 410-433.
We hope that ACTAN can help facilitate such an endeavour, which is becoming increasingly feasible now, with our access to digital media, cloud-based data storage, and globally networked citizen/scientist information resources.
Bear in mind that this ontology has NO COPYRIGHT, so neither will any of your contributions to it (see Licensing page).
If you would like to collaborate, feel free to contact Ditch Townsend
If you can’t access this article, try searching for its title in Google Scholar to see if there are alternative sources. ↩