Robot-Locust Social Information Transfer Occurs in Predator Avoidance Contexts

Social learning is an evolutionarily important ability increasingly attributed also to invertebrate species. Interfacing robots with animals represents a promising strategy to investigate social learning. Herein, we studied if the gregarious form of Locusta migratoria, a particularly suited model to examine social learning, can use social information provided by robotic demonstrators to optimize their predator avoidance. Robotic demonstrators with different silhouettes and colours (biomimetic or neutral) were used to investigate if their rotation on a rod (e.g. hiding behaviour) elicited the same behaviour in neighbouring locusts. Locusts’ responses were affected by different robotic demonstrators, observing a significant impact of the biomimetic silhouette in reducing the latency duration, and in promoting social learning (e.g. locusts displaying hiding behaviour after observing it in robotic demonstrators). A significant impact of colour patterns in triggering socially induced hiding behaviour was also recorded, especially when the biomimetic silhouette was coloured with the gregarious-like pattern. This research indicates gregarious locusts exploit social information in specific ecological contexts, providing basic knowledge on the complex behavioural ecology and social biology in invertebrates. The proposed animal-robot interaction paradigm shows the role of robots as carrier of social information to living organisms, suggesting social biorobotics as advanced and sustainable approach for socio-biology investigation, and environmental management.