How can technology improve the study of animals, and how can the study of animals improve technology

Massimo De Agrò

The technological development of our society has lately skyrocketed. After just 90 years after the construction of the first Turing complete machine, we all have in our pockets computers much more powerful than anything our ancestors could ever imagine. Today, with the massive developments of natural language models and deep neural networks, possibilities seem endless. Unsurprisingly, these new technologies are enormously useful for any field of science, including the study of animal behaviour and cognition. The application of engineering, computer science, and mathematical modelling to the aforementioned topics is the scope of the young field of computational ethology. Some of the possibilities granted by this new science will be presented, along with their practical applications in the study of invertebrates' behaviour. These include: i) the use of computer vision algorithms for live tracking moving animals and their interaction; ii) markerless pose estimation; iii) virtual reality environments for animals. All of these applications represent revolutionary ways in which technology can improve the study of biology. There converse however is also true: discoveries in biology can lead to technological improvements. Evolutionary algorithms are an example of such a relationship: inspired by the evolution of living organisms, this algorithm can generate optimal solutions to computational problems by promoting the survival and reproduction of the best simulated individuals. This system has found applications in robot developments and artificial intelligence and often performs better than classical convergence processes. In the end, the future relationship of these two fields will be discussed, unlocking new possibilities and discoveries.