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Texture shapes how we perceive and like food, yet clear links between mechanical measurements and sensory perception of texture remain elusive. Here we combine sensory data from a blind tasting with 101 participants with mechanical texture…
The human face is a multi-signal system continuously transmitting information of identity and emotion. In shared human-animal environments, the face becomes a reliable tool of heterospecific recognition. Because humans display mixed…
The reward system is one of the fundamental drivers of animal behaviors and is critical for survival and reproduction. Despite its importance, the problem of how the reward system has evolved is underexplored. In this paper, we try to…
Scent marks play a crucial role in both territorial and sexual communication in many species. We investigated how free-ranging dogs respond to scent marks from individuals of different identities in terms of sex and group, across varying…
Associative learning allows animals to rapidly adapt to changes in the environment. Whether and what aspects of such acquired traits may be transmittable across generations remains unclear. Using prolonged olfactory training and subsequent…
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein-protein interaction map, as well as many natural and man-made networks, shares the scale-free topology. The preferential attachment model was suggested as a generic network evolution model that yields…
Free-ranging dogs (FRDs) in human-dominated areas encounter obstacles such as noise, pollution, limited food sources, and anthropogenic disturbance while resting. Since FRDs have survived as a population in India, as in many other parts of…
In group foraging situations, the conventional expectation is that increased food availability would enhance consumption, especially when animals prioritize maximizing their food intake. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by…
Interspecific communication plays a critical role in mediating human-animal interactions, particularly in contexts involving access to anthropogenic resources. This study investigates the influence of human gazing on the begging strategies…
We apply genetic programming techniques to the `shepherding' problem, in which a group of one type of animal (sheep dogs) attempts to control the movements of a second group of animals (sheep) obeying flocking behavior. Our genetic…
The evolution and function of imitation have always been placed within the confines of animal learning and associated with its crucial role in cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Can imitation evolve as a form of phenotypic…
For humans, the process of grasping an object relies heavily on rich tactile feedback. Most recent robotic grasping work, however, has been based only on visual input, and thus cannot easily benefit from feedback after initiating contact.…
The parent-offspring conflict theory is an interesting premise for understanding the dynamics of parental care. However, this theory is not easy to test empirically, as exact measures of parental investment in an experimental set-up are…
Species inhabiting urban environments experience enormous anthropogenic stress. Behavioural plasticity and flexibility of temperament are crucial to successful urban-adaptation. Urban free-ranging dogs experience variable human impact, from…
Diet management is key to managing chronic diseases such as diabetes. Automated food recommender systems may be able to assist by providing meal recommendations that conform to a user's nutrition goals and food preferences. Current…
Various fossil evidences show that hunting is one of major means of ancient human to get foods. But the running speed of our ancestors was much slower than quadruped animals, and they did not have sharp claws and canines. So, they have to…
We propose Turing Learning, a novel system identification method for inferring the behavior of natural or artificial systems. Turing Learning simultaneously optimizes two populations of computer programs, one representing models of the…
For group-living animals, reaching consensus to stay cohesive is crucial for their fitness, particularly when collective motion starts and stops. Understanding the decision-making at individual and collective levels upon sudden disturbances…
In the last 25 years there has been an important increase in the amount of data collected from animal-mounted sensors (bio-probes), which are often used to study the animals' behaviour or environment. We focus here on an example of the…
Animals can learn efficiently from a single experience and change their future behavior in response. However, in other instances, animals learn very slowly, requiring thousands of experiences. Here I survey tasks involving fast and slow…