The Use of Triaxial Accelerometers and Machine Learning Algorithms for Behavioural Identification in Domestic Cats (Felis catus): A Validation Study

Animal behaviour can be an indicator of health and welfare. Monitoring behaviour through visual observation is labour-intensive and there is a risk of missing infrequent behaviours. Twelve healthy domestic shorthair cats were fitted with triaxial accelerometers mounted on a collar and harness. Over seven days, accelerometer and video footage were collected simultaneously. Identifier variables (n = 32) were calculated from the accelerometer data and summarized into 1 s epochs. Twenty-four behaviours were annotated from the video recordings and aligned with the summarised accelerometer data. Models were created using random forest (RF) and supervised self-organizing map (SOM) machine learning techniques for each mounting location. Multiple modelling rounds were run to select and merge behaviours based on performance values. All models were then tested on a validation accelerometer dataset from the same twelve cats to identify behaviours. The frequency of behaviours was calculated and compared using Dirichlet regression. Despite the SOM models having higher Kappa (>95%) and overall accuracy (>95%) compared with the RF models (64-76% and 70-86%, respectively), the RF models predicted behaviours more consistently between mounting locations. These results indicate that triaxial accelerometers can identify cat specific behaviours.