Toward Multimodal Models of Animal Communication: Insights from New York City Rats

Urban rats thrive in cities worldwide, yet little is known about the communicative behaviors that support their survival. We conducted fieldwork on free-ranging rats in New York City, combining thermal imaging and ultrasonic audio recordings with artificial intelligence techniques for movement and acoustic analysis. Our approach captures fine-scale locomotion, reconstructs the 3D geometry of foraging environments such as subways, streets, and parks, and quantifies vocalizations across ecological contexts. This work sets the stage for a larger scale species- agnostic proposal to use integrated behavioral analysis systems and multimodal modeling frameworks to study bioacoustics in the wild.