ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Responsive robotic prey reveal how predators adapt to predictability in escape tactics.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Optimal locomotor strategy for predator avoidance in fish prey.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Larval zebrafish swim bouts in three dimensions reveal both new and redundant behaviours.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Behavioural response of prey to repeated attacks by non-coordinating predators.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Visual Lateralisation in Female GuppiesEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Random behavior is stable across tasks and time.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- PreyTouch: a touchscreen-based closed-loop system for studying predator-prey interactions.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Predator Personality Variation, Not the Multiple Stressors of Temperature and Light, Determines Feeding Motivation in an Ambush PiscivoreEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Correlation between bioluminescent blinks and swimming behavior in the splitfin flashlight fish Anomalops katoptron.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Enhanced conspicuousness of prey in warmer water mitigates the constraint of turbidity for predators.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Virtual prey with Lévy motion are preferentially attacked by predatory fish.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To increase their chances of survival, prey often behave unpredictably when escaping from predators. However, the response of predators to, and hence the effectiveness of, such tactics is unknown. We programmed interactive prey to flee from an approaching fish predator (the blue acara, Andinoacara pulcher) using real-time computer vision and two-wheeled robots that controlled the prey’s movements via magnets. This allowed us to manipulate the prey’s initial escape direction and how predictable it was between successive trials with the same individual predator. When repeatedly exposed to predictable prey, the predators adjusted their behavior before the prey even began to escape: prey programmed to escape directly away were approached more rapidly than prey escaping at an acute angle. These faster approach speeds compensated for a longer time needed to capture such prey during the subsequent pursuit phase. By contrast, when attacking unpredictable prey, the predators adopted intermediate approach speeds and were not sensitive to the prey’s escape angle but instead showed greater acceleration during the pursuit. Collectively, these behavioral responses resulted in the prey’s predictability having no net effect on the time taken to capture prey, suggesting that unpredictable escape behavior may be advantageous to prey in fewer circumstances than originally thought. Rather than minimizing capture times, the predators in our study appear to instead adjust their behavior to maintain an adequate level of performance during prey capture.
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