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Abstract Studying the detailed biomechanics of flying animals requires accurate three‐dimensional coordinates for key anatomical landmarks. Traditionally, this relies on manually digitizing animal videos, a labor‐intensive task that scales poorly with increasing framerates and numbers of cameras. Here, we present a workflow that combines deep learning–powered automatic digitization with filtering and correction of mislabeled points using quality metrics from deep learning and 3D reconstruction. We tested our workflow using a particularly challenging scenario: bat flight. First, we documented four bats flying steadily in a 2 m³wind tunnel test section. Wing kinematic parameters resulting from manually digitizing bats with markers applied to anatomical landmarks were not significantly different from those resulting from applying our workflow to the same bats without markers for five out of six parameters. Second, we compared coordinates from manual digitization against those yielded via our workflow for bats flying freely in a 344 m³enclosure. Average distance between coordinates from our workflow and those from manual digitization was less than a millimeter larger than the average human‐to‐human coordinate distance. The improved efficiency of our workflow has the potential to increase the scalability of studies on animal flight biomechanics. 

A predator's capacity to catch prey depends on its ability to navigate its environment in response to prey movements or escape behaviour. In predator–prey interactions that involve an active chase, pursuit behaviour can be studied as the collection of rules that dictate how a predator should steer to capture prey. It remains unclear how variable this behaviour is within and across species since most studies have detailed the pursuit behaviour of high-speed, open-area foragers. In this study, we analyse the pursuit behaviour in 44 successful captures by Corynorhinus townsendii , Townsend's big-eared bat ( n = 4). This species forages close to vegetation using slow and highly manoeuvrable flight, which contrasts with the locomotor capabilities and feeding ecologies of other taxa studied to date. Our results indicate that this species relies on an initial stealthy approach, which is generally sufficient to capture prey (32 out of 44 trials). In cases where the initial approach is not sufficient to perform a capture attempt (12 out of 44 trials), C. townsendii continues its pursuit by reacting to prey movements in a manner best modelled with a combination of pure pursuit, or following prey directly, and proportional navigation, or moving to an interception point.