Animals have their own algorithm for decision making

Technical progress and ever new research results enable us to at least partially understand the world and its components. Nevertheless, there will always be new puzzles in science that may one day be solved by highly complex calculations and simulations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute have now unearthed interesting findings from the animal world.

Specifically, the research project presented here was about finding out to what extent animals understand the complexity of their environment and make decisions based on the information available. In doing so, these seem to operate in a similarly binary manner as computers, in that they break down the world into simple decisions with two options.

In this way, animals choose their course of action as efficiently as possible and also enable their species to survive. The biologists also developed a computer model that was supposed to depict this approach. The result: decisions were broken down into elections with two options until the final approach was found.

Different animal species were also sent into immersive virtual worlds. Fruit flies, fish or grasshoppers were exposed to various photorealistic scenarios and the movements were precisely recorded during the selection of the optimal procedure.

One researcher explains the new findings as follows: Up until now we thought that animals first decide where to go and then take the route, but the changing environment has a permanent influence on the decisions that the respective species makes.

This process can also be transferred to animals that are part of a herd or otherwise belong to a group. It is therefore certain that they do not act in a planned manner, but rather react predominantly on the basis of the current situation. Reducing the complexity to an “either, or” decision enables a quick and efficient procedure that can also ensure survival.

Via MPG