  Understanding primate behavior is a mission-critical goal of both biology and
biomedicine. Despite the importance of behavior, our ability to rigorously
quantify it has heretofore been limited to low-information measures like
preference, looking time, and reaction time, or to non-scaleable measures like
ethograms. However, recent technological advances have led to a major
revolution in behavioral measurement. Specifically, digital video cameras and
automated pose tracking software can provide detailed measures of full body
position (i.e., pose) of multiple primates over time (i.e., behavior) with high
spatial and temporal resolution. Pose-tracking technology in turn can be used
to detect behavioral states, such as eating, sleeping, and mating. The
availability of such data has in turn spurred developments in data analysis
techniques. Together, these changes are poised to lead to major advances in
scientific fields that rely on behavioral as a dependent variable. In this
review, we situate the tracking revolution in the history of the study of
behavior, argue for investment in and development of analytical and research
techniques that can profit from the advent of the era of big behavior, and
propose that zoos will have a central role to play in this era.
