To flee or not to flee: surviving on incomplete information

Prey animals make defence decisions under pressure, frequently without sufficient information on the level of threat. Our understanding of decision making and information processing under predation pressure has been hampered by the fact that the information available to prey animals is difficult to quantify. We introduce an analytically transparent, experimentally versatile and behaviourally rich model system that enables us under natural conditions - to manipulate and measure risk, cost and visual information during predation events. Mathematical tools developed in robotics research will allow us to identify the adaptive rules and the information processing mechanisms underlying decision making in complex, real-life conditions.