Noser Rahel, Byrne Richard W
Scottish Primate Research Group and Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology, The University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.
Anim Cogn. 2007 Jul;10(3):331-40. doi: 10.1007/s10071-006-0068-x.
Encounters between groups of wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) can be viewed as a natural experiment to investigate the nature of these primates' mental representations of large-scale space. During a 16-month field study in a high population density habitat we recorded the foraging routes and the most important resources of a group of 25 individuals. Also, we estimated the locations of additional baboon groups relative to the study group. Routes were less linear, travel speed was higher, and inter-resource distances were larger when other groups were present within 500 m of the focal group; thus, the study group avoided others by taking detours. We predicted that evasive manoeuvres would be characteristic of different possible orientation mechanisms, and compared them with our observations. We analysed 34 evasive manoeuvres in detail. In an area that lacked prominent landmarks, detours were small; larger detours occurred when resources were directly visible, or in the vicinity of a hill offering conspicuous landmarks. In areas without prominent landmarks, detours were along familiar routes and waiting bouts of up to 60 min occurred; on one occasion the study group aborted their entire day's journey. We discuss these findings in the light of time and energy costs and suggest that the baboons lack the ability to compute Euclidean relations among locations, but use network maps to find their way to out-of-sight locations.
野生东非狒狒(Papio ursinus)群体之间的相遇可以被视为一项自然实验,用于研究这些灵长类动物对大规模空间的心理表征的本质。在一项针对高种群密度栖息地的为期16个月的实地研究中,我们记录了一个由25只个体组成的群体的觅食路线和最重要的资源。此外,我们还估计了其他狒狒群体相对于研究群体的位置。当其他群体出现在焦点群体500米范围内时,路线的线性程度较低,行进速度较高,资源间距离较大;因此,研究群体通过绕道来避开其他群体。我们预测规避策略将是不同可能定向机制的特征,并将其与我们的观察结果进行比较。我们详细分析了34次规避策略。在一个缺乏显著地标的区域,绕道距离较短;当资源直接可见或在有明显地标的小山附近时,绕道距离会更大。在没有显著地标的区域,绕道沿着熟悉的路线进行,并且会出现长达60分钟的等待时段;有一次,研究群体放弃了他们一整天的行程。我们根据时间和能量成本来讨论这些发现,并认为狒狒缺乏计算地点之间欧几里得关系的能力,而是使用网络地图来找到前往视线外地点的路。