Blavatnik School of Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Movement Ecology Lab, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Science. 2020 Jul 10;369(6500):188-193. doi: 10.1126/science.aax6904.
Seven decades of research on the "cognitive map," the allocentric representation of space, have yielded key neurobiological insights, yet field evidence from free-ranging wild animals is still lacking. Using a system capable of tracking dozens of animals simultaneously at high accuracy and resolution, we assembled a large dataset of 172 foraging Egyptian fruit bats comprising >18 million localizations collected over 3449 bat-nights across 4 years. Detailed track analysis, combined with translocation experiments and exhaustive mapping of fruit trees, revealed that wild bats seldom exhibit random search but instead repeatedly forage in goal-directed, long, and straight flights that include frequent shortcuts. Alternative, non-map-based strategies were ruled out by simulations, time-lag embedding, and other trajectory analyses. Our results are consistent with expectations from cognitive map-like navigation and support previous neurobiological evidence from captive bats.
七十年来，对“认知地图”（即空间的非自我中心表示）的研究已经取得了关键的神经生物学见解，但在自由放养的野生动物领域仍缺乏相关实地证据。我们使用了一种能够以高精度和高分辨率同时跟踪数十只动物的系统，收集了 172 只觅食的埃及果蝠的数据，这些蝙蝠在 4 年期间的 3449 个蝙蝠夜晚中采集了超过 1800 万个定位数据。详细的轨迹分析，结合转移动实验和对果树的详尽绘制，表明野生蝙蝠很少表现出随机搜索，而是反复进行有目标的、长而直的飞行，其中包括频繁的捷径。模拟、时间滞后嵌入和其他轨迹分析排除了替代的、非基于地图的策略。我们的结果与基于认知地图的导航的预期一致，并支持以前来自圈养蝙蝠的神经生物学证据。
