Tracking human foragers and their prey reveals adaptive predator-prey dynamics
- 1Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Abstract
Hunting for mobile prey is thought to have played a key role in hominin evolution, by providing high-quality nutrition that supported the development of the exceptionally large human brain. However, human-prey dynamics remain poorly understood because studies have not yet tracked human foragers and their prey simultaneously. Here, we employ high resolution tracking of groups of human foragers (ice-fishers) and their prey (fish shoals) to study human-prey dynamics. Our results show that foragers adaptively combined personal and social information in deciding where to forage and for how long, closely matching the prey distribution. Prey responded dynamically to human exploitation, showing increased attraction to fishing activity, alongside decreased biting probability. Furthermore, we found that foragers adaptively relied on memory, preferentially returning to areas with high prey presence, particularly when their current return rate was low. Our results show how human foragers overcome the challenges of extracting invisible, mobile and reactive prey by tightly tuning patch-selection, patch-leaving and patch-return decisions to the distribution and behaviour of their prey.
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BibTeX
@misc{dhellemmes2026tracking,
title = {{Tracking human foragers and their prey reveals adaptive predator-prey dynamics}},
author = {F. Dhellemmes and A. Schakowski and V. Chirkov and M. Kavelaars and F. Korzilius and D. Deffner and P. Romanczuk and R. Kortet and P. Pihlasvaara and R. Kurvers},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.21.752541},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.752541v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tracking human foragers and their prey reveals adaptive predator-prey dynamics
AU - F. Dhellemmes
AU - A. Schakowski
AU - V. Chirkov
AU - M. Kavelaars
AU - F. Korzilius
AU - D. Deffner
AU - P. Romanczuk
AU - R. Kortet
AU - P. Pihlasvaara
AU - R. Kurvers
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.21.752541
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.752541v1
AB - Hunting for mobile prey is thought to have played a key role in hominin evolution, by providing high-quality nutrition that supported the development of the exceptionally large human brain. However, human-prey dynamics remain poorly understood because studies have not yet tracked human foragers and their prey simultaneously. Here, we employ high resolution tracking of groups of human foragers (ice-fishers) and their prey (fish shoals) to study human-prey dynamics. Our results show that foragers adaptively combined personal and social information in deciding where to forage and for how long, closely matching the prey distribution. Prey responded dynamically to human exploitation, showing increased attraction to fishing activity, alongside decreased biting probability. Furthermore, we found that foragers adaptively relied on memory, preferentially returning to areas with high prey presence, particularly when their current return rate was low. Our results show how human foragers overcome the challenges of extracting invisible, mobile and reactive prey by tightly tuning patch-selection, patch-leaving and patch-return decisions to the distribution and behaviour of their prey.
ER -