← Animals
Nothing here is saved. This tool keeps your entries only while the page is open. If you refresh, close the tab, or your device sleeps and reloads, you will lose the lot. For a long observation, write your tally on paper as you go, or copy the results out before you leave the page.

Ethogram recorder

An ethogram is a list of the behaviours you expect to see, and a record of how often you see them. It tells you how an animal is actually spending its day, which is one of the clearest things we have for judging whether its life is any good.

Step one

Set up the observation

Pick a starting list, then add, rename or delete anything. The list should fit the animal in front of you.

Name or species.
How often you write down what you see.
How long you watch in total.

Starting lists

Your behaviour list

A code makes it faster to write down on paper. The description is what stops two people recording the same thing differently.
BehaviourCodeWhat it looks like

Step two

Watching

When the timer reaches zero it waits for you. Tap what the animal is doing at that moment — not what it was doing, not what it does next. If you missed it, tap Couldn't see and carry on. Nothing here goes wrong.

0:00 Getting ready

Nothing recorded yet.

Step three

What you saw

Now think about it

  1. What were the most common behaviours?
  2. What could have caused them?
  3. What was the range of behaviours you saw?
  4. Were there any unusual ones?
Worth knowing

About ethograms

What makes a good one
  • A clearly defined list of the behaviours you expect
  • Each one distinguishable from the others — if two people could disagree about which box a behaviour goes in, the definition isn't tight enough
  • A clear structure
  • Behaviours described in relation to the environment and the other animals

Activity budget: the amount of time an animal spends doing each thing. You work it out once the data is collected, and you can compare it against the same species elsewhere in the collection, at other collections, or in the wild.

Before you start watching
  • Don't choose an animal that's going to sleep through the whole thing — although in terms of cataloguing behaviour, recording time spent asleep genuinely matters
  • Make sure you can reliably tell apart the individuals you're supposed to be watching
  • Make sure you can see the places the animal might move to. If you can't see it, you can't record it
  • Position yourself so your presence doesn't change what the animal does
  • Watch for a while before you start, to work out what behaviours to put on the list
  • Have the chart ready before the formal period starts, and make it easy enough to fill in without looking down for long
What ethograms are good and bad at

Good at

  • Gathering a lot of data
  • Being a natural study, if the animal is in its own environment
  • Working in the wild
  • Linking to behaviours that actually matter to the animal
  • Producing a time budget
  • Costing almost nothing — very little equipment
  • Being changed on the spot when you realise you missed something

Bad at

  • Being quick — it takes real time
  • Being interpreted without background knowledge of the species
  • Handling long behaviour lists, which get hard to log
  • Following social groups
  • Coping with an animal that does nothing at all

PawSteps by Pets on the Green · Warlingham, Surrey