A behavior-environment information loop drives sensory navigation
How animals use sensing and movement as a two-way feedback loop to find food
Organisms navigate by constantly looping information between what they sense and how they move — and these two directions of information flow predict how well they navigate. Researchers measured this two-way coupling in bacteria, worms, flies, and AI agents, finding that the same principle explains navigation success across all of them, even though each creature uses completely different strategies.
Understanding how organisms actually navigate could improve robot design, from search-and-rescue drones to autonomous vehicles that need to find targets in unfamiliar environments. The framework also reveals what makes each creature's strategy work — why a bacterium tumbles the way it does, or how a fruit fly learned to track smells — which could lead to better biological pest control or faster algorithms for AI agents learning to explore.