There’s hardly anything cuter than a flock of baby chicks. If you’ve ever hung out with the fluffy little critters, you know how close they stick to their mothers. That’s why it’s so strange (and weirdly adorable) that this robot has a cavalcade of chicks following it around and sticking to it like glue, just as if it were a real mother hen. The PoulBot looks nothing like a hen, nor even anything remotely bird-related, and yet the chicks can’t get enough of it.

The PoulBot is being used as a part of a research experiment from researchers from European universities to study some of the nuances of animal behaviors with the goal of creating robots that can mimic said behaviors. The result? Robots that can better interact with real animals in a manner more befitting of an actual organic creature.

With the PoulBot, the robot was used as the “mother hen” for the chicks to imprint on, which happens around 5 hours after they start to hatch. Typically farmers attempt to create this bond with their baby chicks so that it’s easier to work with the animals, and that’s exactly what’s done with this robot. The chicks are housed in small boxes where they watch the robot move and listen to it emit beeping noises, but not chicken coos — that might mean something completely different than what they’re looking for. At least the robot sounds vaguely like a chicken.

The PoulBot is programmed to keep ensuring the chicks follow it, leading it around to spots in the pen with an overhead camera tracking all their movements. The robot is even programmed to ensure it doesn’t harm or kill its little chickadees, and thus has a special measure for whether one of the chicks has fallen asleep or not. It can do it all, and it’s all for a good cause.

The robot is helping researchers figure out the intricacies of how species interact, and how specifically these baby chicks act around their mother hen, but it could lead to other more important breakthroughs in the future. Right now though, it certainly makes for a strangely cute viewing experience, if nothing else.