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Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment

Almost all animals navigate their environment to find food, shelter, and mates. Spatial cognition of nonhuman primates in large-scale environments is notoriously difficult to study. Field research is ecologically valid, but controlling confounding variables can be difficult. Captive research enables...

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Autores principales: Allritz, Matthias, Call, Josep, Schweller, Ken, McEwen, Emma S., de Guinea, Miguel, Janmaat, Karline R. L., Menzel, Charles R., Dolins, Francine L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9232100/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35749496
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm4754
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author Allritz, Matthias
Call, Josep
Schweller, Ken
McEwen, Emma S.
de Guinea, Miguel
Janmaat, Karline R. L.
Menzel, Charles R.
Dolins, Francine L.
author_facet Allritz, Matthias
Call, Josep
Schweller, Ken
McEwen, Emma S.
de Guinea, Miguel
Janmaat, Karline R. L.
Menzel, Charles R.
Dolins, Francine L.
author_sort Allritz, Matthias
collection PubMed
description Almost all animals navigate their environment to find food, shelter, and mates. Spatial cognition of nonhuman primates in large-scale environments is notoriously difficult to study. Field research is ecologically valid, but controlling confounding variables can be difficult. Captive research enables experimental control, but space restrictions can limit generalizability. Virtual reality technology combines the best of both worlds by creating large-scale, controllable environments. We presented six chimpanzees with a seminaturalistic virtual environment, using a custom touch screen application. The chimpanzees exhibited signature behaviors reminiscent of real-life navigation: They learned to approach a landmark associated with the presence of fruit, improving efficiency over time; they located this landmark from novel starting locations and approached a different landmark when necessary. We conclude that virtual environments can allow for standardized testing with higher ecological validity than traditional tests in captivity and harbor great potential to contribute to longstanding questions in primate navigation, e.g., the use of landmarks, Euclidean maps, or spatial frames of reference.
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spelling pubmed-92321002022-07-08 Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment Allritz, Matthias Call, Josep Schweller, Ken McEwen, Emma S. de Guinea, Miguel Janmaat, Karline R. L. Menzel, Charles R. Dolins, Francine L. Sci Adv Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences Almost all animals navigate their environment to find food, shelter, and mates. Spatial cognition of nonhuman primates in large-scale environments is notoriously difficult to study. Field research is ecologically valid, but controlling confounding variables can be difficult. Captive research enables experimental control, but space restrictions can limit generalizability. Virtual reality technology combines the best of both worlds by creating large-scale, controllable environments. We presented six chimpanzees with a seminaturalistic virtual environment, using a custom touch screen application. The chimpanzees exhibited signature behaviors reminiscent of real-life navigation: They learned to approach a landmark associated with the presence of fruit, improving efficiency over time; they located this landmark from novel starting locations and approached a different landmark when necessary. We conclude that virtual environments can allow for standardized testing with higher ecological validity than traditional tests in captivity and harbor great potential to contribute to longstanding questions in primate navigation, e.g., the use of landmarks, Euclidean maps, or spatial frames of reference. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022-06-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9232100/ /pubmed/35749496 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm4754 Text en Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
Allritz, Matthias
Call, Josep
Schweller, Ken
McEwen, Emma S.
de Guinea, Miguel
Janmaat, Karline R. L.
Menzel, Charles R.
Dolins, Francine L.
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title_full Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title_fullStr Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title_full_unstemmed Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title_short Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
title_sort chimpanzees (pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment
topic Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9232100/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35749496
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm4754
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