School of Human Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; UWA Africa Research & Engagement Centre, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
School of Agriculture and Environment, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
Curr Biol. 2020 Nov 16;30(22):4528-4533.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.076. Epub 2020 Oct 1.
While the ability of naturally ranging animals to recall the location of food resources and use straight-line routes between them has been demonstrated in several studies [1, 2], it is not known whether animals can use knowledge of their landscape to walk least-cost routes [3]. This ability is likely to be particularly important for animals living in highly variable energy landscapes, where movement costs are exacerbated [4, 5]. Here, we used least-cost modeling, which determines the most efficient route assuming full knowledge of the environment, to investigate whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) living in a rugged, montane environment walk least-cost routes to out-of-sight goals. We compared the "costs" and geometry of observed movements with predicted least-cost routes and local knowledge (agent-based) and straight-line null models. The least-cost model performed better than the local knowledge and straight-line models across all parameters, and linear mixed modeling showed a strong relationship between the cost of observed chimpanzee travel and least-cost routes. Our study provides the first example of the ability to take least-cost routes to out-of-sight goals by chimpanzees and suggests they have spatial memory of their home range landscape. This ability may be a key trait that has enabled chimpanzees to maintain their energy balance in a low-resource environment. Our findings provide a further example of how the advanced cognitive complexity of hominins may have facilitated their adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions and lead us to hypothesize that landscape complexity may play a role in shaping cognition.
虽然在几项研究中已经证明了自然栖息动物回忆食物资源位置和使用直线路线的能力[1,2]，但尚不清楚动物是否能够利用其对景观的了解来走成本最低的路线[3]。对于生活在高度变化的能量景观中的动物来说，这种能力可能尤其重要，因为在这些环境中，运动成本会加剧[4,5]。在这里，我们使用了最成本建模，该模型假设对环境有充分的了解，来确定最有效的路线，以调查生活在崎岖多山环境中的黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）是否会走成本最低的路线到达看不见的目标。我们将观察到的运动的“成本”和几何形状与预测的最低成本路线以及局部知识（基于代理）和直线零模型进行了比较。最成本模型在所有参数上都优于局部知识和直线模型，线性混合模型显示出观察到的黑猩猩旅行成本与最低成本路线之间存在很强的关系。我们的研究提供了黑猩猩有能力走成本最低的路线到达看不见的目标的第一个例子，并表明它们对其栖息地景观具有空间记忆。这种能力可能是黑猩猩在低资源环境中维持其能量平衡的关键特征。我们的发现进一步证明了人类认知复杂性的高级程度如何促进了他们对各种环境条件的适应，并使我们假设景观复杂性可能在塑造认知方面发挥作用。
