The widespread sharing of information on the Internet has given rise to ecological studies that use data from digital sources including digitized museum records and social media posts. Most of these studies have focused on understanding species occurrences and distributions. In this essay, we argue that data from digital sources also offer many opportunities to study animal behavior including long-term and large-scale comparisons within and between species. Following Nikko Tinbergen's classical roadmap for behavioral investigation, we show how using videos, photos, text, and audio posted on social media and other digital platforms can shed new light on known behaviors, particularly in a changing world, and lead to the discovery of new ones.

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Hydrobiology České Budějovice Czech Republic

CEABN Centro de Ecologia Aplicada Prof Baeta Neves InBIO Laboratório Associado Instituto Superior de Agronomia Universidade de Lisboa Lisboa Portugal

Department of Anatomy Cell Biology and Zoology Faculty of Sciences University of Extremadura Badajoz Spain

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of California Los Angeles California United States of America

Department of Marine Renewable Resources Institute of Marine Science Barcelona Spain

Ecology in the Anthropocene Associated Unit CSIC UEX Faculty of Sciences University of Extremadura Badajoz Spain

Faculty of Environmental Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Prague Czech Republic

Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Department of Geosciences and Geography University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland

Institute for Advanced Study Technical University of Munich Garching Germany

Institute of Evolutionary Biology Faculty of Biology Biological and Chemical Research Centre University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland

Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology Jacob Blaustein Institutes of Desert Research Ben Gurion University of the Negev Ben Gurion Israel

Poznań University of Life Sciences Department of Zoology Poznań Poland

School of Geography and the Environment University of Oxford Oxford United Kingdom

School of Zoology Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel

TUM School of Life Sciences Ecoclimatology Technical University of Munich Freising Germany

Université Paris Saclay CNRS AgroParisTech Ecologie Systématique Evolution Gif sur Yvette France

WildCRU Recanati Kaplan Centre Department of Zoology Oxford University Oxford United Kingdom

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