To harness the forces that power the sun to produce substantial clean energy on Earth, researchers heat fuel to such a high temperature that atoms melt into electrons and nuclei to form a hot, gaseous soup called plasma. Roughly 20 times the temperature of the sun's core at 200 million degrees Celsius, the plasma can rip through any material on Earth, so it must be confined by magnetic fields—but it can only be controlled for short periods. Researchers have been able to exert this control for decades, without understanding the precise physics of how it works. Now, in a first step to prolonged control, researchers at Japan's National Institute for Fusion Science have discovered that the underlying mechanism mirrors the unlikely biological predator-prey model.