EKEO: An Enhanced Kangaroo Escape Optimizer with Balanced Search for Global Optimization and Engineering Design.

The Kangaroo Escape Optimizer (KEO) is a recently proposed biomimetic metaheuristic inspired by the adaptive escape strategies of kangaroos in predator-prey interactions. Although effective, KEO-like algorithms based on many populations may suffer from premature convergence and loss of population diversity when addressing complex, multimodal, and constrained optimization problems. This paper proposes an Enhanced Kangaroo Escape Optimizer (EKEO) that integrates Differential Evolution Mutation (DEM) and Quasi-Oppositional Learning (QOL) to address fundamental limitations in exploration-exploitation balance. From a biomimetic perspective, DEM mimics the refined high-frequency muscular adjustments of a kangaroo during close-range evasion, enabling local refinement around promising solutions, while QOL emulates the animal's sudden directional changes and scanning behavior to preserve population diversity and escape local optima. Their principled integration yields a robust optimization framework that consistently outperforms state-of-the-art and classical metaheuristics across benchmark functions and real-world engineering problems. The findings suggest a generalizable design principle for biomimetic hybrid metaheuristics, demonstrating that coupling directed exploitation with diversity-preserving exploration leads to reliable high-performance optimization. The performance of EKEO is rigorously evaluated in two phases. First, its optimization accuracy and convergence speed are benchmarked against 11 state-of-the-art and classical metaheuristics on 23 classical benchmark functions and the CEC 2019 test suite. Second, its practical applicability and constraint-handling effectiveness are validated on four real-world engineering design problems: step-cone pulley, gear system, tubular column, and pressure vessel design. The experimental results are supported by comprehensive statistical analyses (including Wilcoxon rank-sum tests) and convergence curves, showing that EKEO consistently outperforms its competitors in solution quality, convergence speed, and robustness. These findings establish EKEO as a competitive, reliable, and versatile biomimetic optimization tool suitable for solving complex continuous and constrained engineering optimization problems.