Collaboration in order to perform various tasks such as herding or hunting is frequently seen in nature. Cooperative behaviors benefit the group by helping them achieve rewards that would not be possible for an individual to achieve alone. In addition to cooperative hunting, spotted hyenas also participate in coordinated mobbing of lions, which is a complex behavior that is still believed to be genetic. Lions are larger and stronger than hyenas, and therefore the hyenas need to cooperate in large numbers to overcome their fear and attack the lions. Individualistic hyena traits and other factors that may affect the frequency or success of lion-mobbing have not been studied in simulation before. Furthermore, multiple emotions, such as fear and affiliation towards teammates, affect the willingness of hyenas to attack lions. The computational model of lion-hyena interaction developed in this work can help understand the evolution of mobbing behaviors. It may be used in the future to evolve strategies in video game characters to overcome powerful adversaries or solve problems that involve high risk.

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In The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2019), 333--340, July 2019.

@inproceedings{rajagopalan:alife2019, title={Factors that Affect the Evolution of Complex Cooperative Behavior}, author={Padmini Rajagopalan and Kay E. Holekamp and Risto Miikkulainen}, booktitle={The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2019)}, month={July}, pages={333--340}, url="http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?rajagopalan:alife2019", year={2019} }