Tsuyoshi Shimmura

Farm animal welfare is to improve the productivity by ensuring the comfort of farm animals, and to produce high value-added livestock products that contribute to safety and human health. We understand the minds and motivations of animals that can not speak human words through their behavior and also feed it back to livestock production technology, creating a better environment (One Welfare) for both animals and managers.

At present, our group is conducting researches with two major projects: (1) Systems ethology and (2) Animal Computer Interaction, with the aim of research that combines the enjoyment and applicability as science. Our features of research is to introduce all the necessary techniques to achieve the goals while focusing on animal behavior.

(1) Systems Ethology
The aim of systems ethology is to incorporate systems biology into behavioral science to understand and control the molecular mechanisms of behavior. At present, we are focusing on behaviors such as cannibalism and vocalization, and we are working on identification of regulatory genes centering on integrated OMICS from the genome level to the ecological level.

(2) Animal Computer Interaction
The aim of Animal Computer Interaction is to realize conversations with animals, like Siri, where humans talk to mobile phones. Currently, we are working on technology development to visualize and control animal emotions from voice communication and behavior by combining animal behavior sciences, information engineering and robotics.

Selected Publications
1. Nakayama & Shimmura et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1-8 (2019).
2. Shimmura et al. Scientific Reports 9, 1-7 (2019).
3. Shimmura et al. Nature Communications 8, 1-7 (2017).
4. Shimmura et al. Scientific Reports 5, 1-9 (2015).
5. Nakane & Shimmura et al. Current Biology 24, R596–R597 (2014).
6. Shimmura & Yoshimura. Current Biology 23, R231-R233 (2013).