Spatial mapping shows that some African elephants use cognitive maps to navigate the core but not the periphery of their home ranges

Presotto, Andrea; Fayrer-Hosken, Richard; Curry, Caitlin; Madden, Marguerite

Spatial mapping shows that some African elephants use cognitive maps to navigate the core but not the periphery of their home ranges

dc.contributor.author	Presotto, Andrea
dc.contributor.author	Fayrer-Hosken, Richard
dc.contributor.author	Curry, Caitlin
dc.contributor.author	Madden, Marguerite
dc.date.accessioned	2019-01-30T21:52:44Z
dc.date.available	2019-01-30T21:52:44Z
dc.date.issued	2019-01-28
dc.description.abstract	Strategies of navigation have been shown to play a critical role when animals revisit resource sites across large home ranges. The habitual route system appears to be a sufficient strategy for animals to navigate while avoiding the cognitive cost of traveling using the Euclidean map. We hypothesize that wild elephants travel more frequently using habitual routes to revisit resource sites as opposed to using the Euclidean map. To identify the elephants’ habitual routes, we created a python script, which accounted for frequently used route segments that constituted the habitual routes. Results showed elephant navigation flexibility traveling at Kruger National Park landscape. Elephants shift strategies of navigation depend on the familiarity of their surroundings. In the core area of their home range, elephants traveled using the Euclidean map, but intraindividual differences showed that elephants were then converted to habitual routes when navigating within the less familiar periphery of their home range. These findings are analogous to the recent experimental results found in smaller mammals that showed that rats encode locations according to their familiarity with their surroundings. In addition, as recently observed in monkeys, intersections of habitual routes are important locations used by elephants when making navigation decisions. We found a strong association between intersections and new segment usage by elephants when they revisit resource sites, suggesting that intersection choice may contribute to the spatial representations elephants use when repeatedly revisiting resource sites.	en_US
dc.description.uri	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-019-01242-9	en_US
dc.identifier	doi:10.13016/m2hrit-uy2a
dc.identifier.citation	Presotto, A., Fayrer-Hosken, R., Curry, C. et al. Anim Cogn (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-019-01242-9	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11603/12664
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.publisher	Springer	en_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAt	Salisbury University	en_US
dc.subject	Navigation flexibility	en_US
dc.subject	Animal navigation	en_US
dc.subject	Spatial cognition	en_US
dc.subject	African elephants	en_US
dc.subject	Habitual routes	en_US
dc.subject	Geographic Information Systems (GIS)	en_US
dc.title	Spatial mapping shows that some African elephants use cognitive maps to navigate the core but not the periphery of their home ranges	en_US
dc.type	Collection	en_US