Physical cognition - Animal navigation & collective movement Flashcards
Lecture 4
What is physical cognition ?
An organisms understanding of objects and causal relationships between once thing and the next thing - usually associated with food
Explain pheromone trails as a means of animal navigation
Pheromone trails are released as an innate response in a receiver of the same species. The pheromones leave a trail of droplets which have an odour. More ants make a stronger trail until the food source is used up.
Explain Path integration as a means of animal navigation
This is when an organism keeps track of their position and orientation with respect to the starting or ‘home’ position thereby enabling a direct return path. Ants use stride length to do this which was displayed when ants over or under estimated the distance they had to travel when their legs were stumped or they wore stilts.
Explain piloting with landmarks as a means of animal navigation
Ants seem to take a record of the size of a landmark’s retinal image as the goal (retinal snapshot) . This doesn’t involve any complex cognition or memorising.
Explain cognitive maps as a means of animal navigation
A cognitive map is any representation of space held by an animal. This helps animals to find the same area when their location changes. This was shown in the wild with bats who made 9,218 flights, 400 of which were unrecorded short cuts. Baby bats were tagged before their first flight and were still able to take short cuts.
Explain earth magnetic field as a means of animal navigation
Spiney lobster spend their day inside coral reefs and at night they forage over a huge area , they then return in darkness to their same den or one nearby. This is possible because lobsters use the earth’s magnetic field to orientate themselves. Another example is sea turtles which are likely to imprint on the unique magnetic signature of their natal beach.
Explain star navigation as a means of animal navigation
Beetles took the least time to enter an arena during the starry night condition - using the stars to guide them
Explain multimodal navigation as a means of animal navigation
Beetles use the sun and wind to navigate and intergrate the two systems to gain the most knowledge . Which one they use more depends on weather conditions. They use a dynamic multimodal compass system for straight line orientation
Who decides when a group of animals move?
The larger the group, the smaller the proportion of informed individuals needed to guide the group. Only a very small proportion of informed individuals is required to achieve great accuracy.
Explain the role of leaders and followers during collective movement (white storks)
Group movements of a flock of 27 juvenile white storks were recorded. A small number of leaders navigated to and exploited thermals, meanwhile followers benefitted from their movements. Followers left thermals earlier and at a lower height , and thus had to flap more. Followers also migrated far less annually than did leaders.
Explain the role of leaders and followers during collective movement (Wild baboons)
The process of shared decision-making governs baboon movement. Rather than preferentially following dominant individuals, baboons are more likely to follow when multiple initiators agree. When conflicts arise over the direction of movement , baboons choose one direction over the other when the angle between them is large, but they compromise if it is not.
What is a shared group decision ?
Responding to each other’s orientation and movement, Active communication.
How do meerkats achieve collective movement?
Meerkats use vocalisations . Moving calls emitted by meerkats increased the speed of the group. When dominant individuals were involved in the chorus , the group’s reaction was not stronger than when only subordinates called . Groups only increased speed in response to playback of moving calls from one individual when other group members emitted moving calls as well.
How do African wild dogs achieve collective movement?
Group departure is predicted by a minimum number of sneezes. Number of sneezes needed for the group to depart is reduced whenever the dominant individuals initiate rallies. However, dominant members are not needed to depart, a majority may override dominant preferences when the consensus of subordinates is sufficiently great.
What is a cognitive map?
A record in the central nervous system of macroscopic geometric relations among surfaces in the environment used to plan movements through the environment .
