The foragers who kept hiding after the danger left
one. Thirty-five volunteers played a computer game built like an animal-foraging experiment: five minutes in a field, food patches to raid, bushes to hide in, and one round where a predator was out. The top scorer in each game won money.
two. Under threat, the players did what mice do: hiding time went up, and visits to the food patches went down. For the volunteers whose safe round came first, the arrival of risk cut their patch visits by about five.
three. Then the order of the rounds showed the carryover. Those who met the predator first barely relaxed when their next round was safe: their patch visits rose by about two, a third of the five-visit drop the other group showed when risk arrived. The danger had left. The caution had not.
four. For patch visits, about half the difference between players came down to who they were, not what they faced. The authors call it incomplete updating: the world changed, and their sense of it lagged. Thirty-five volunteers, one imaginary predator, real hesitation. Subach and colleagues, Royal Society Open Science, 2026. PMID 42729117.
Sources: Subach et al., Royal Society Open Science (2026). doi:10.1098/rsos.260389 · PubMed 42729117
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