To automatically monitor animal behaviour in animal shelters, we developed an open-source behaviour real-time spatial tracking identification system (BeRSTID). Using computer vision, BeRSTID allows for open-source, simple, accessible animal behaviour tracking in real-time and post-event processing modes.

Our study by Bailey H Eagan, Ben Eagan and Alexandra Protopopova showed that BeRSTID correlated closely to human-coded eating and drinking behaviours of cats in naturalistic shelter environments. While demonstrated in a shelter, BeRSTID may be generalized to track unique subjects in varied settings for multiple use cases.