Towards High-Resolution Neuro-Behavioral Quantification of Sheep in the Field to Study Complex Social Behaviors

Abstract Social animals, including humans, engage in complex collective behaviors in the field. While there are simple models of collective decision making and movement that are amenable to study in traditional laboratory environments, they inevitably fail to capture the full complexity of natural behaviors as they occur in the field. Moreover, standard mammalian laboratory species either exhibit only simple social behaviors (e.g., mice) or are too challenging to house in large groups (e.g., primates). Here, we will leverage decades of extensive experience studying sheep in their normal pasture settings and during interactions between ewes and their lambs. We propose to develop a paradigm for acquiring high resolution (in space and time) measurements of individual herd members, including head-mounted devices to sense their visual sensorium. We will test these devices in existing herds maintained for agricultural study, while also developing a robust paradigm for conducting neural recording experiments. If successful this work will lay the foundation for future study of the neural circuits underlying complex collective behaviors in a large-brained highly social animal model.