Fig. 1

Simulated behavioural pattern and decision tree of agents. a Behavioural cycle. Individuals will visit the feeder approximately every 70 min. The meal lasted 5 min on average (including the time to approach a feeder). Between two visits of the feeder, the individuals would frequently switch between random walking and resting behaviour. The duration of walking and resting were both ~ 20 s. b Decision tree. Eating had the highest priority and walking had the lowest. At the beginning of each time step, the program would check if the motivation of the behaviour in the previous step was still above zero. If this was true, then the individual will continue the behaviour, without performing other behaviours even if the motivation of those behaviours was greater than the threshold value. This means that once the individual started a behaviour, it would not initiate a new behaviour until the motivation for the current behaviour fell below zero. When none of the behaviours exceeded the threshold an individual would rest. c Time budget. In the simulation, individuals on average go to the feeder every 70 min and spend 4% of the total time on eating. Walking and resting evenly take up the rest of the time