While the unique hunting behavior of archerfish has received considerable scientific attention, the specific social cues that govern behaviors like intraspecific kleptoparasitism in the species are less understood. This paper asks whether the use of a robotic facsimile representing an archerfish can elicit a social response if it approximates an archerfish’s appearance, along with key features of its hunting behavior. We found that the fish respond to the robot when it hunted, as indicated by decreasing distances between the robot and fish (and among the fish) during the robot’s hunting behavior sequence, as well as higher net transfer entropy when the robot was hunting. These effects were present even when the robot’s “hunt” was unproductive and did not result in food. The temporal pattern of fish approach to the robot and each other indicated that the segment of robot hunting behavior proximal to the robotic facsimile shot elicited fish behavior initially. However, earlier cues in the robot’s hunting sequence became important following more experience with a food contingency. This indicates that further studies could use a robotic facsimile to conduct a detailed stimulus analysis, changing aspects of the robot’s appearance and behavior to uncover the basic mechanisms of information transfer among individuals in a social hunting scenario.

虽然射水鱼独特的狩猎行为受到了相当大的科学关注，但人们对控制该物种种内盗窃寄生等行为的特定社会线索知之甚少。这篇论文探讨了如果使用代表射水鱼的机器人传真机模仿射水鱼的外观及其狩猎行为的主要特征，是否会引起社会反应。我们发现鱼在机器人狩猎时会对机器人做出反应，这表现为在机器人狩猎行为序列期间机器人与鱼（以及鱼之间）的距离减小，以及机器人狩猎时更高的净传输熵。即使当机器人的“狩猎”没有结果并且没有找到食物时，这些影响仍然存在。鱼接近机器人和彼此的时间模式表明，最接近机器人传真镜头的机器人狩猎行为片段最初引发了鱼的行为。然而，随着对食物突发事件的更多体验，机器人狩猎序列中的早期线索变得很重要。这表明进一步的研究可以使用机器人传真进行详细的刺激分析，改变机器人的外观和行为的各个方面，以揭示社交狩猎场景中个体之间信息传递的基本机制。