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We constructed a modular, biomimetic red panda paw with which to experimentally investigate the evolutionary reason for the existence of the false thumbs of red pandas. These thumbs were once believed to have shared a common origin with the…
We are living in an uncertain and dynamically changing world, where optimal decision-making under uncertainty is directly linked to the survival of species. However, evolutionary selection pressures that shape value-based decision-making…
Interaction with its immediate environment determines the ecology of an organism. Species present in any habitat, wild or urban, may face extreme pressure due to sudden perturbations. When such disturbances are unpredictable, it becomes…
Disgust is a basic emotion that serves to avoid contaminants, and is central to the behavioural immune system. While disgust-motivated avoidance occurs in bonobos and chimpanzees, humans show uniquely high levels of contamination…
A robotic feeding system must be able to acquire a variety of foods. Prior bite acquisition works consider single-arm spoon scooping or fork skewering, which do not generalize to foods with complex geometries and deformabilities. For…
Reinforcement learning method is extremely competitive in gait generation techniques for quadrupedal robot, which is mainly due to the fact that stochastic exploration in reinforcement training is beneficial to achieve an autonomous gait.…
Autonomous feeding is challenging because it requires manipulation of food items with various compliance, sizes, and shapes. To understand how humans manipulate food items during feeding and to explore ways to adapt their strategies to…
To identify genetic changes underlying dog domestication and reconstruct their early evolutionary history, we analyzed novel high-quality genome sequences of three gray wolves, one from each of three putative centers of dog domestication,…
Imitation learning from human demonstrations enables robots to perform complex manipulation tasks and has recently witnessed huge success. However, these techniques often struggle to adapt behavior to new preferences or changes in the…
Progress has led to a detailed understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie decision making in primates. However, less is known about why such mechanisms are present in the first place. Theory suggests that primate decision making…
Understanding how animals learn is a central challenge in neuroscience, with growing relevance to the development of animal- or human-aligned artificial intelligence. However, existing approaches tend to assume fixed parametric forms for…
Global food production must reduce environmental impact while meeting rising demand for dietary protein. Plant-based meats aim to preserve the sensory and cultural role of animal meat, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and…
Free-ranging dogs (Canis familiaris) thrive in diverse landscapes, including those heavily modified by humans. This study investigated the influence of resource availability on their spatial ecology across 52 rural and 41 urban sites,…
Self-avoiding random walks were performed on protein residue networks. Compared with protein residue networks with randomized links, the probability of a walk being successful is lower and the length of successful walks shorter in…
Food protein digestibility and bioavailability are critical aspects in addressing human nutritional demands, particularly when seeking sustainable alternatives to animal-based proteins. In this study, we propose a machine learning approach…
A key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have provided evidence for…
Humans use social context to specify preferences over behaviors, i.e. their reward functions. Yet, algorithms for inferring reward models from preference data do not take this social learning view into account. Inspired by pragmatic human…
Foraging is a central decision-making behavior performed by all animals, essential to garnishing enough energy for an organism to survive. Similarly, mating is crucial for evolutionary continuity and offspring production. Mate choice is one…
What is life. Schrodingers question is discussed here for a specific protein, villin, which builds cells in tissues that detect taste and sound. Villin is represented by a sequence of 827 amino acids bound to a peptide backbone chain. We…
Evolutionary robot systems offer two principal advantages: an advanced way of developing robots through evolutionary optimization and a special research platform to conduct what-if experiments regarding questions about evolution. Our study…