Using natural travel paths to infer and compare primate cognition in the wild

Karline R L Janmaat; Miguel de Guinea; Julien Collet; Richard W Byrne; Benjamin Robira; Emiel van Loon; Haneul Jang; Dora Biro; Gabriel Ramos-Fernández; Cody Ross; Andrea Presotto; Matthias Allritz; Shauhin Alavi; Sarie Van Belle

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102343

Using natural travel paths to infer and compare primate cognition in the wild

iScience. 2021 Apr 15;24(4):102343. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102343. eCollection 2021 Apr 23.

Authors

Karline R L Janmaat^{1

2

3}, Miguel de Guinea⁴, Julien Collet⁵, Richard W Byrne^{6

7}, Benjamin Robira^{8

9}, Emiel van Loon¹⁰, Haneul Jang¹¹, Dora Biro^{5

12}, Gabriel Ramos-Fernández^{13

14}, Cody Ross¹¹, Andrea Presotto¹⁵, Matthias Allritz¹⁶, Shauhin Alavi^{17

18

19}, Sarie Van Belle²⁰

Affiliations

¹ Evolutionary and Population Biology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
² Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
³ ARTIS Amsterdam Royal zoo, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
⁴ Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
⁵ Oxford Navigation Group, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
⁶ Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrew, UK.
⁷ Scottish Primate Research Group, Scotland, UK.
⁸ Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
⁹ Eco-anthropologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Université de Paris, Paris, France.
¹⁰ Theoretical and Computational Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
¹¹ Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
¹² Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, USA.
¹³ Department of Mathematical Modelling of Social Systems, Institute for Research on Applied Mathematics and Systems, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
¹⁴ Center for Complexity Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
¹⁵ Department of Geography and Geosciences, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MA, USA.
¹⁶ School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
¹⁷ Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz, Germany.
¹⁸ Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
¹⁹ Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Anthropology, University of Austin at Texas, Austin, TX, USA.

Abstract

Within comparative psychology, the evolution of animal cognition is typically studied either by comparing indirect measures of cognitive abilities (e.g., relative brain size) across many species or by conducting batteries of decision-making experiments among (typically) a few captive species. Here, we propose a third, complementary approach: inferring and comparing cognitive abilities through observational field records of natural information gradients and the associated variation in decision-making outcomes, using the ranging behavior of wild animals. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal, we present the results of a global survey assessing the availability of long-term ranging data sets from wild primates and the willingness of primatologists to share such data. We explore three ways in which such ranging data, with or without the associated behavioral and ecological data often collected by primatologists, might be used to infer and compare spatial cognition. Finally, we suggest how ecological complexity may be best incorporated into comparative analyses.

Keywords: Biological Sciences; Cognitive Neuroscience; Neuroscience.

Publication types

Review