MACA-Net: Mamba-Driven Adaptive Cross-Layer Attention Network for Multi-Behavior Recognition in Group-Housed Pigs

The accurate recognition of pig behaviors in intensive farming is crucial for health monitoring and growth assessment. To address multi-scale recognition challenges caused by perspective distortion (non-frontal camera angles), this study proposes MACA-Net, a YOLOv8n-based model capable of detecting four key behaviors: eating, lying on the belly, lying on the side, and standing. The model incorporates a Mamba Global–Local Extractor (MGLE) Module, which leverages Mamba to capture global dependencies while preserving local details through convolutional operations and channel shuffle, overcoming Mamba’s limitation in retaining fine-grained visual information. Additionally, an Adaptive Multi-Path Attention (AMPA) mechanism integrates spatial-channel attention to enhance feature focus, ensuring robust performance in complex environments and low-light conditions. To further improve detection, a Cross-Layer Feature Pyramid Transformer (CFPT) neck employs non-upsampled feature fusion, mitigating semantic gap issues where small target features are overshadowed by large target features during feature transmission. Experimental results demonstrate that MACA-Net achieves a precision of 83.1% and mAP of 85.1%, surpassing YOLOv8n by 8.9% and 4.4%, respectively. Furthermore, MACA-Net significantly reduces parameters by 48.4% and FLOPs by 39.5%. When evaluated in comparison to leading detectors such as RT-DETR, Faster R-CNN, and YOLOv11n, MACA-Net demonstrates a consistent level of both computational efficiency and accuracy. These findings provide a robust validation of the efficacy of MACA-Net for intelligent livestock management and welfare-driven breeding, offering a practical and efficient solution for modern pig farming.