Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America.
Department of Comparative Medicine, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Nov 21;19(11):e0311673. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311673. eCollection 2024.
Primates can rapidly detect potential predators and modify their behavior based on the level of risk. The gaze direction of predators is one feature that primates can use to assess risk levels: recognition of a predator's direct stare indicates to prey that it has been detected and the level of risk is relatively high. Predation has likely shaped visual attention in primates to quickly assess the level of risk but we know little about the constellation of low-level (e.g., contrast, color) and higher-order (e.g., category membership, perceived threat) visual features that primates use to do so. We therefore presented human and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) participants with photographs of potential predators (lions) and prey (impala) while we recorded their overt attention with an eye-tracker. The gaze of the predators and prey was either directed or averted. We found that both humans and chimpanzees visually fixated the eyes of predators more than those of prey. In addition, they directed the most attention toward the eyes of directed (rather than averted) predators. Humans, but not chimpanzees, gazed at the eyes of the predators and prey more than other features. Importantly, low-level visual features of the predators and prey did not provide a good explanation of the observed gaze patterns.
灵长类动物能够迅速察觉潜在的捕食者，并根据风险程度改变行为。捕食者的注视方向是灵长类动物用来评估风险水平的一个特征：猎物察觉到捕食者的直接注视，表明它已被发现，风险水平相对较高。捕食行为可能塑造了灵长类动物的视觉注意力，使它们能够快速评估风险程度，但我们对灵长类动物用来评估风险程度的低层次（例如对比度、颜色）和高层次（例如类别成员、感知威胁）视觉特征的组合知之甚少。因此，我们向人类和黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）参与者展示了潜在捕食者（狮子）和猎物（黑斑羚）的照片，同时使用眼动追踪器记录他们的显性注意力。捕食者和猎物的注视方向要么是定向的，要么是回避的。我们发现，人类和黑猩猩都比猎物更注视捕食者的眼睛。此外，他们将最多的注意力集中在定向（而不是回避）捕食者的眼睛上。人类，而不是黑猩猩，注视着捕食者和猎物的眼睛比其他特征更多。重要的是，捕食者和猎物的低层次视觉特征并不能很好地解释观察到的注视模式。
