---
pretty_name: BeVo
license: other
task_categories:
  - text-to-audio
tags:
  - audio
  - bioacoustics
  - animal-vocalization
  - behavior-conditioned-generation
---

# BeVo: Behavior-Vocalization Dataset

<p align="center">
  <img src="assets/dataset.svg" width="1000">
</p>

**BeVo** is a behavior-conditioned animal vocalization dataset for generating animal sounds from natural-language descriptions of behaviors, social interactions, and contexts.

BeVo contains **31,191 vocalization events** from **6 species**, organized into **42 vocalization anchors**, with approximately **524.3 minutes of audio**.

The behavioral conditions are associated with recordings through shared vocalization anchors and should be interpreted as **anchor-level behavioral conditions**, rather than event-level ground-truth descriptions of individual recordings.

**Project Page:** https://persimmontian.github.io/BCAVG

| Split | Goat | Hyena | Marmoset | Meerkat | Zebra | Zebra Finch | Total |
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| Train | 2,826 | 10,216 | 4,800 | 4,475 | 353 | 2,298 | 24,968 |
| Validation | 360 | 1,226 | 600 | 564 | 62 | 311 | 3,123 |
| Test | 400 | 800 | 600 | 600 | 200 | 500 | 3,100 |
| **Total** | **3,586** | **12,242** | **6,000** | **5,639** | **615** | **3,109** | **31,191** |

## Dataset Structure

```text
BeVo/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── dataset.svg
│
├── data/
│   ├── source_datasets.csv
│   ├── train/
│   ├── validation/
│   └── test/
│
├── conditions/
│   ├── train_validation/
│   ├── test_assignments.json
│   └── generation_prompt.md
│
└── behavior_cards/
    └── behavior_cards.xlsx
```

- `data/` contains the audio events, organized by split, species, and vocalization anchor.
- `conditions/train_validation/` contains the behavioral-condition pools used for training and validation.
- `conditions/test_assignments.json` contains the fixed audio-condition assignments used for the test set.
- `conditions/generation_prompt.md` contains the prompt used to generate behavioral conditions.
- `behavior_cards/behavior_cards.xlsx` contains the literature-grounded behavior cards used as the behavioral knowledge source for condition generation.
- `data/source_datasets.csv` records the original bioacoustic data sources, publications, persistent identifiers, and source-specific licensing information.

Audio files are organized as:

```text
data/<split>/<species>/<anchor>/*.wav
```

## Source Data and Licensing

BeVo integrates recordings from six public bioacoustic datasets covering spotted hyena, meerkat, common marmoset, goat, plains zebra, and zebra finch.

Detailed information about the original datasets, publications, persistent identifiers, and licensing terms is provided in:

```text
data/source_datasets.csv
```

BeVo is a **mixed-license dataset**. Third-party audio retains the license or terms of use of its original source dataset. BeVo-created materials are released under the terms described in the repository-level LICENSE, to the extent that the BeVo authors hold the relevant rights.

Please consult both LICENSE and `data/source_datasets.csv` before redistributing or reusing the audio.


## Citation

If you use the BeVo dataset in your research, please cite our paper:

```bibtex
@misc{deng2026behaviorconditioned,
  title         = {Behavior-Conditioned Animal Vocalization Generation: Event-Aware Modeling and Multidimensional Evaluation},
  author        = {Deng, Xinlong and Tian, Yong and Guan, Jian and Kong, Qiuqiang and Jiang, Jie and Cao, Yin},
  year          = {2026},
  eprint        = {2610.16382},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.SD},
  url           = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16382}
}
```