We have all heard about the extraordinary animals that use chemical defenses to avoid predation, and how their usually bright colorations warns predators about their unpleasant flavors (a skill called aposematism). But, how do predators learn to avoid eating prey with these defenses?

Previous studies suggest that how quickly a predator learns about color patterns depends on the complexity of the prey community – that is, the number of different  patterns and the abundance of toxic prey. But testing this hypothesis using natural populations can be incredibly challenging.

A group of researchers came up with a clever solution: they used a videogame played by humans! In this videogame (you can play it here), they tested two different prey communities based on real aposematic butterflies from the tropics. One was a simple community with four color patterns and a high probability (50%) of encountering toxic butterflies, affecting the player’s score; the other, a complex community with ten color patterns and a reduced probability (20%) of finding a toxic butterfly.

The data collected shows that predators – humans in this case – are much better learners when only four color patterns were present. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t learn to avoid toxic patterns in a complex community: humans learned better when the toxic patterns were more similar to each other, and more different from the non-toxic patterns. 

This fun experiment confirmed that the protection given by aposematism increases when the community has fewer color patterns, more toxic animals, or when the color patterns are more different between toxic and non-toxic animals. The authors think that these results are representative of what other predators, such as birds and other mammals, may experience in nature.

Experiments like this one help scientists closely examine animal behaviors that depend on multiple factors that are difficult to manipulate in natural settings. But at the same time it gives us perspective, reminding us of how much human behaviors were shaped by our evolution before civilization happened.