Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For guppies (Poecilia reticulata) getting ready to mate, the color orange speaks volumes. The more orange coloration on a male guppy, the more virile it is, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The research dives into the evolutionary mystery of why male fish have such vibrant and bold colors and patterns. Throughout the animal kingdom, bright colors are used as a visual signal.

Rainbow fish behave like matadors by darting away from their predators at the last moment to avoid being eaten, a new study reveals. The tiny fish, also known as a Trinidadian guppy, spans less than an inch in length. It initially draws the attention of its most common predator – the much larger pike cichlid – by turning its irises black, which makes its eyes very conspicuous. According to a British team of scientists who performed experiments in water tanks using robots, the rainbow fish then uses quick reflexes to whip its head out of the way, causing the predator to miss, before swimming away. The speed of the whole interaction is around three hundredths of a second, meaning it's only fully observable using a high-speed camera.

A virtual pet that feeds on laughter, surprise and tears. Bring Guppy out of its virtual fishbowl and into the real world, and feed it through a well-balanced diet of feels. Guppy will learn and evolve based on players' facial expressions and social interactions – the more faces it can scan, the better! Guppy can also recognize and respond to over 200 objects, building up knowledge as it interacts more and more with the physical world. Watch as Guppy takes stock of its newfound knowledge to evolve from a non-verbal AI to a unique creature with its own personality – but beware that sentience may lead to a full blown existential crisis!

In Aerts & Gabora (2005a,b), we introduced a modeling scheme for concepts and their combinations that makes use of the mathematical formalism of quantum physics. This quantum modeling scheme has been further worked out in Aerts (2009a) and Aerts (2010a,b). The experimental data we used to create our modeling scheme were data collected in experiments with human subjects that were conducted within the framework of concepts research in psychology (Hampton 1988a,b). These experiments required human subjects to estimate typicalities of exemplars of concepts and their combinations. The results of these estimations were in conflict with how combinations of concepts such as'conjunction' and'disjunction' were expected to behave classically, as prescribed by classical logic or set theory. Hampton called these deviations from classical behavior'overextension' and'underextension', depending on their relation to the classically expected values of typicality (Hampton 1988a,b).