Video game lets you hunt like a wolf to help science
Researchers have developed a video game that uses human athletes to model predator-prey chase dynamics. By tracking movement data, the team aims to understand the physical limits and exhaustion patterns of wild animals.
Why it matters
This innovative approach allows scientists to study complex biological behaviors that are nearly impossible to observe directly in the wild.
Using data from real predator-prey chases, researchers built a video game that models how hunters and prey tire over time, and how that fatigue shapes the outcome.
To capture those movements, researchers recorded human athletes playing tag while wearing GPS trackers and motion sensors.
The game also serves as a research tool. As people play, it records the split-second decisions they make under pressure.
This opens a way to study chase behavior and exhaustion that no wild animal will perform on cue in a lab.
The project began as a collaboration between two labs that do not usually work together. One studies how human athletes move, while the other studies animals in the wild.
Between them, they asked whether sports-science methods could gauge the physical limits of a hunting predator.
Dr. Baptiste Morel at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc ( USMB ) in France leads the Force-Velocity-Endurance group.
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