Seeking free software for animal behavior tracking

[Eagle9]

Good day guys

I need to conduct the behavioral tests on rats. I need some free program for social behavior; the program should be able to track two rats simultaneously, their movement trajectories and time spent by these animals when they are close or far to each other (and to analyse the results statistically if possible, however this is additional requirements. At least the program should be able to track the rats). Which program would you advise me? The Dutch company “Noldus” offers us good programs, but they are not free of charge. I have heard that some such programs are developed by the National Institutes of Health, but I could not find anything at their web-site. Can you help me?

 

[BillTre]

I am no expert on this, but I know people use ImageJ (the java descendant of NIH image) which is free from the NIH for a variety of imaging purposes. When photoshop was young, NIH Image was a free alternative to it (developed by someone in the NIH I think). Perhaps that is what you heard about.

It can be programed to do a lot of stuff, there are a lot of user generated plugins for it, and I would assume there are user groups also.
It has been around for years.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

Some open source software:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17681380
http://www.anymaze.co.uk/index.htm
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SwisTrack

One of the best, but very costly: http://www.noldus.com/EthoVision-XT/more-about-ethovision-xt

 

[Eagle9]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17681380
http://www.anymaze.co.uk/index.htm
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SwisTrack

And which program among these can analyse rats' behavior?

 

[Fervent Freyja]

And which program among these can analyse rats' behavior?

That's what you are for, I guess...