How Scientists Use Robots
to Study Animal Behavior
What is a biomimetic robot?
Why are robots helpful in studying animal behavior?
What does Robobee try to do in the hive?
Why didn’t Robobee always work?
What old idea about pigeons did the robot falcon test?
What did scientists discover about how pigeons really respond to danger?
What did the Robofish experiment show about fish leadership?
What simple rule did the robot termites follow to build their mound?
How did the robot predator affect the mosquitofish?
Why might robot animals be important in the future?
How Scientists Use Robots to Study Animal Behavior
Animals can do amazing things.
Bees dance to tell each other where food is. Guppies decide who leads their group. Pigeons fly together to escape predators.
Scientists have studied these behaviors for years. But now, they are using something new to help them understand animal behavior even better: robots.
These special robots are made to act like animals.
They are called biomimetic robots, which means they copy how real animals look and move. Some look real, some smell real, and others just move the right way.
The great thing about robots is that they always do what they’re told, exactly the same way each time. This helps scientists test ideas over and over.
Scientists can place these robots into groups of real animals to see how the animals react. This helps them answer tough questions, like why bees follow one dancer but not another, or how fish decide who leads.
Sometimes the robots even help protect animals by pretending to be predators, so no real animal gets hurt.
Here are five amazing robot-animal stories from real science labs.
Robobee Joins the Hive
Bees do a special “waggle dance” to tell others where food is. They dance and shake their wings in certain ways. But scientists still don’t fully understand which parts of the dance give the most important information.
Tim Landgraf, a scientist in Berlin, built a robot bee to find out.
His “Robobee” is a small plastic shape with one wing. It can move and shake like a dancing bee. When placed in a real hive, Robobee sometimes convinced bees to fly to new food locations. But it didn’t always work.
Sometimes the bees followed Robobee right away.
Other times, they ignored it.
Landgraf wondered if the bees needed to be in a certain mood, or if only some bees were open to new information. To learn more, his team is working on a new Robobee with better movement and smell. They hope it will help them understand bee behavior even more.
A Robot Falcon Attacks
Falcons are predators that hunt pigeons.
But how do pigeons respond when they see one coming?
The old idea said that each pigeon tries to fly to the middle of the flock, hoping the falcon picks someone else.
To test this, Daniel Sankey, a scientist in the UK, used a robot falcon. This robot could “attack” flocks of pigeons again and again in the exact same way. It was also safer than using a real falcon.
When the robot attacked, the pigeons did not fly to the middle.
Instead, they all turned together in the same direction. This group movement may help keep every bird safer. It showed that pigeons might be more cooperative than selfish when flying as a group.
Robofish Leads the Way
In a school of fish, bigger fish often lead the group. But are they leaders because they are big or because they are older and smarter?
To find out, scientist Jens Krause and his team made Robofish — a 3D-printed guppy robot. Robofish could be made in different sizes and moved by magnets under the tank. It could also react to the movements of real fish using video cameras and computers.
The real guppies followed the larger Robofish, showing that size really does matter.
But the robot had to behave politely. At first, it swam too close, and the real fish swam away. Once the team fixed that, Robofish became a much better leader. The real guppies liked robots that respected their space.
Robot Termites Build a Mound
Termites build tall mounds with special air vents. But how do they know where to drop the dirt?
One idea is that they use humidity — the wetness in the air — to decide where to dump soil.
Justin Werfel and his team at Harvard built small robots that acted like termites.
These robots didn’t look like insects. They were small carts that carried blocks. Each robot had a humidity sensor and dropped its block when the air became drier.
Together, the robot termites built a structure that looked like a real termite mound.
This showed that simple rules like “drop dirt when it’s dry” might be enough to explain how termites build their homes.
Terror Fish vs. Mosquitofish
Mosquitofish are tiny fish from the southern U.S., but they’ve become an invasive species in many parts of the world. They harm native animals by competing for food and space.
Scientist Giovanni Polverino wanted to scare them — but in a safe way. He and his team built a robot fish that looked like a largemouth bass, a predator of the mosquitofish.
They placed the robotic predator in tanks with the mosquitofish. After just 15 minutes a week, the mosquitofish were thinner, more tired, and had fewer babies.
The robot didn’t bother native Australian fish, since they had never seen that predator before. The idea is to use fear to help native animals without harming anyone.
Robots of the Future
Not all robot tests work.
One scientist tried to build a robotic pigeon, but it couldn’t fly fast enough to stay with the flock.
Still, many scientists believe that using robots will help us learn more about how animals live, learn, and work together.
Biomimetic – copying the form or behavior of living things.
Behavior – the way an animal or person acts.
Replica – a copy or model that looks like the real thing.
Invasive species – an animal or plant that spreads where it shouldn’t and causes problems.
Predator – an animal that hunts and eats other animals.
Humidity – how much water is in the air.
Hypothesis – an idea that scientists test to see if it's true.
Stimulus – something that causes a reaction.
Swarm – a group of insects or robots moving together.
Polite – acting kindly and respectfully.
► COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
— please answer with complete sentences
What is a biomimetic robot?
Why are robots helpful in studying animal behavior?
What does Robobee try to do in the hive?
Why didn’t Robobee always work?
What old idea about pigeons did the robot falcon test?
What did scientists discover about how pigeons really respond to danger?
What did the Robofish experiment show about fish leadership?
What simple rule did the robot termites follow to build their mound?
How did the robot predator affect the mosquitofish?
Why might robot animals be important in the future?
► From EITHER/OR ► BOTH/AND
► FROM Right/Wrong ► Creative Combination
THESIS — Argue the case that robot animals are fake and can’t teach us anything about real animals and real animal behavior.
ANT-THESIS — Argue the case that, very soon, robot animals will be so like real animals they’ll teach us everything we want to know about animals and animal behavior.
SYN-THESIS — Explain how both perspectives could be true at the same time.
