In this paper, we propose novel methods to find the best relevant feature subset using fuzzy rough set-based attribute subset selection with biologically inspired algorithm search such as ant colony and particle swarm optimization and the principles of an evolutionary process. We then propose a hybrid fuzzy rough with K -nearest neighbor (K-NN)-based classifier (FRNN) to classify the patterns in the reduced datasets, obtained from the fuzzy rough bio-inspired algorithm search. While exploring other possible hybrid evolutionary processes, we then conducted experiments considering (i) same feature selection algorithm with support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF) classifier; (ii) instance based selection using synthetic minority over-sampling technique with fuzzy rough K -nearest neighbor (K-NN), SVM and RF classifier. The proposed hybrid is subsequently validated using real-life datasets obtained from the University of California, Irvine machine learning repository. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid produces good classification accuracy. Finally, parametric and nonparametric statistical tests of significance are carried out to observe consistency of the classifiers.