Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Spatial memory and orientation
- mechanims for orientation
- path integration
- beacons
- landmarks
- sun compass
- Cognitive maps : ability to learn and understand spatial layouts and to mentally represent them
- ie what is where in the environment
- available in abscence of direct perception of objects/locations
- Meerkats
- Manser and Bell 2004
- response to naturally occuring and recorded alarm calls
- know nearest bolthole
- 83% of time whether or not one was recently passed
- ignore new human made holes even if closer
- if the hole was covered still try to get in
- orientation based on memory
- detailed spatial knowledge of the location
- elephants - water holes
- older matriarch less bunching to calls
- Adaptive specialization hypthesis
- some animals regularly cache food, and
the number of items and how long their
stored for varies between species. This
could be becasue the reliance on store
food caches may be greater for those
living in harsher environments where
failure to recover food caches in winter
may result in starvation. The increased
visual demands of remembering locations
are associated with an enlargement of the
hippocampus an area of the brain
involved in memory. According to the
hypothesis, food caching animals should
have larger hippocampal volumes realtive
to brain and body size than non caching
animals
- Pravosudov and Clayton 2002
- black capped chickadees
- alaskan and coloardo
- alaskan cached more food and needed fewer
looks to find a cache
- possibly due to so many being cached, higher
chance of finding one
- alaskans had a larger hippocampal volumes containing more neurons than colorado
- supports that the harsher the environment=more cached food=greater
need to remember where=larger hippocampus