Gray Emily R, Bloomfield Laurie L, Ferrey Anne, Spetch Marcia L, Sturdy Christopher B
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, P217 Biological Sciences Building, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E9.
Biol Lett. 2005 Sep 22;1(3):314-7. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2005.0347.
Encoding the global geometric shape of an enclosed environment is a principal means of orientation in human and non-human animals. Animals spontaneously encode the geometry of an enclosure even when featural information is available. Although features can be used, they typically do not overshadow geometry. However, all previously tested organisms have been reared in human-made environments with salient geometrical cues. Here, we show that wild-caught mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli) do not spontaneously encode the geometry of an enclosure when salient features are present near the goal. However, chickadees trained without salient features encode geometric information, but this encoding is overshadowed by features.
对封闭环境的整体几何形状进行编码是人类和非人类动物定向的主要方式。即使有特征信息可用，动物也会自发地对围栏的几何形状进行编码。虽然可以利用特征，但它们通常不会掩盖几何形状。然而，所有之前测试过的生物体都是在具有显著几何线索的人造环境中饲养的。在这里，我们表明，当目标附近存在显著特征时，野生捕获的黑顶山雀（Poecile gambeli）不会自发地对围栏的几何形状进行编码。然而，在没有显著特征的情况下训练的黑顶山雀会编码几何信息，但这种编码会被特征掩盖。
