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