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NEUROSCIENCE

The DANNCE of the rats: a new toolkit for 3D tracking of animal behavior

Nature Methods volume 18, pages 460–462 (2021)Cite this article

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A new approach tracks animal movements in 3D from multiple camera views using volumetric triangulation, reconciling occlusions and ambiguities present in any one camera view.

Lured by the scent of a discarded slice, Pizza Rat rouses from her hovel, peeks out into the shadows, and takes a few whiffs. She detects rapidly molding mozzarella and approaches cautiously, whisking the ground. She pauses briefly, using her left back leg to appease the nagging itch on her scabby haunch, then swiftly swings her front right paw to stuff the slice into her jaws. Pizza Rat dances her retreat down the subway stairs until, startled by a filming millennial, she abandons the slice and darts back toward safety. In her 15 seconds of fame (https://youtu.be/UPXUG8q4jKU), Pizza Rat used olfactory, visual and mechanical sensing to coordinate dozens of muscles throughout her body. This sequence of rapid, dexterous movements typifies natural animal behavior. However, the neural control of motor sequences like pizza foraging has been challenging to study, due in large part to an inability to quantify natural behavior in three dimensions (3D).

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Fig. 1: DANNCE estimates animal poses in 3D using all available camera views with volumetric triangulation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Pierre Karashchuk

  2. Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    John C. Tuthill

  3. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Bingni W. Brunton

Authors
  1. Pierre Karashchuk
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  2. John C. Tuthill
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  3. Bingni W. Brunton
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Correspondence to Bingni W. Brunton.

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Karashchuk, P., Tuthill, J.C. & Brunton, B.W. The DANNCE of the rats: a new toolkit for 3D tracking of animal behavior. Nat Methods 18, 460–462 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-021-01110-w

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