Invariants in Configurational Prey Selection by &lt;i&gt;Bufo bufo &lt;/i&gt;(L.)

Ewert, Jörg-Peter; Arend, Britt W H van der; Becker, Victoria; Borchers, H.-W.

doi:10.1159/000121822

Cited by 69 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Movement is a characteristic feature of most animals, and the salience of movement is well appreciated for sensory processing in the visual system (e.g., refs. [17][18][19]. Thus, many predators and prey selectively attend to movement in a visual scene, for obvious reasons.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water shrews detect movement, shape, and smell to find prey underwater

Catania

Hare²,

Campbell³

2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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American water shrews (Sorex palustris) are aggressive predators that feed on a variety of terrestrial and aquatic prey. They often forage at night, diving into streams and ponds in search of food. We investigated how shrews locate submerged prey using highspeed videography, infrared lighting, and stimuli designed to mimic prey. Shrews attacked brief water movements, indicating motion is an important cue used to detect active or escaping prey. They also bit, retrieved, and attempted to eat model fish made of silicone in preference to other silicone objects showing that tactile cues are important in the absence of movement. In addition, water shrews preferentially sniffed model prey fish and crickets underwater by exhaling and reinhaling air through the nostrils, suggesting olfaction plays an important role in aquatic foraging. The possibility of echolocation, sonar, or electroreception was investigated by testing for ultrasonic and audible calls above and below water and by presenting electric fields to foraging shrews. We found no evidence for these abilities. We conclude that water shrews detect motion, shape, and smell to find prey underwater. The short latency of attacks to water movements suggests shrews may use a flush-pursuit strategy to capture some prey.insectivore ͉ olfaction ͉ somatosensory ͉ tactile ͉ whiskers

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water shrews detect movement, shape, and smell to find prey underwater

Catania

Hare²,

Campbell³

2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…In this respect object concepts guiding shrew behavior have much in common with the abstract visual representations described in human and nonhuman primates. At the same time shrew representations are radically different from the nonsegmented, neither size-nor motion-invariant representations that underlie toad prey capture (3,4). Our data show that high-level abstract sensory representations are neither restricted to the primate visual system nor tied to a large brain size.…”

Section: Discussion Tactile Object Representations and The Guidance Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas ticks succeed without a formal representation of a prey object, other animals rely on more elaborate schemata of their prey. The visual object representations underlying prey capture in frogs and toads have been characterized in much detail (3,4). Accordingly, toad attacks on ''worm-like'' stimuli critically depend on simple features like motion (static stimuli are ignored), motion direction, stimulus orientation, and size.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile guidance of prey capture in Etruscan shrews

Anjum

Turni²,

Mulder

et al. 2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

183

136

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Whereas visuomotor behaviors and visual object recognition have been studied in detail, we know relatively little about tactile object representations. We investigate a new model system for the tactile guidance of behavior, namely prey (cricket) capture by one of the smallest mammals, the Etruscan shrew, Suncus etruscus. Because of their high metabolic rate and nocturnal lifestyle, Etruscan shrews are forced to detect, overwhelm, and kill prey in large numbers in darkness. Crickets are exquisitely mechanosensitive, fast-moving prey, almost as big as the shrew itself. Shrews succeed in hunting by lateralized, precise, and fast attacks. Removal experiments demonstrate that both macrovibrissae and microvibrissae are required for prey capture, with the macrovibrissae being involved in attack targeting. Experiments with artificial prey replica show that tactile shape cues are both necessary and sufficient for evoking attacks. Prey representations are motion-and sizeinvariant. Shrews distinguish and memorize prey features. Corrective maneuvers and cricket shape manipulation experiments indicate that shrew behavior is guided by Gestalt-like prey descriptions. Thus, tactile object recognition in Etruscan shrews shares characteristics of human visual object recognition, but it proceeds faster and occurs in a 20,000-times-smaller brain.active touch ͉ barrel cortex ͉ object recognition ͉ Suncus etruscus ͉ whisker

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“…The toad's ability to distinguish between a stripe moved as a worm and the same one moved as an antiworm is invariant for other stimulus parameters, such as (i) the direction in which the stimulus traverses the x, y coordinates of the visual * Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Ew 7/6 field , (ii) the direction of the stimulus background contrast (Ewert, 1968;Ewert and Burghagen, 1978a), (iii) the angular velocity within visible ranges (Ewert et al, 1978a and b), (iv) the mode of movement such as continuous or stepwise , (v) the object distance from the toad's eyes, within behaviorally relevant limits (Ewert and Burghagen, 1978a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Question of prey feature detectors in the toad'sBufo bufo (L.) visual system: A correlation analysis

1978

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Summary. 1. Toads Bufo bufo (L.) prefer as prey "worm-like" objects with long axis orientation parallel to the movement direction rather than the same objects oriented "antiworm-like" with their long axis perpendicular to the movement direction.2. By means of statistical correlation methods with computer programs it was analyzed to what extent neurons from different regions of the visual pathway respond sensitively, selectively or specifically to moving configurational stimuli, such as worm-like and antiworm-like objects of equivalent sizes.3. Neurons with sensitivity to particular moving configurational stimuli were found in the retina (classes R2, R3, R4) and the retinal projection fields in the thalamic pretectal region (class TH3) and the optic tectum (class T5(1)).4. Neurons with selective responses to moving configurational stimulus objects, corresponding to the behavior, were found in a particular population of tectal neurons (class T5 (2)).5. No neurons were found with specific responses to a stimulus of a certain configuration.

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Invariants in Configurational Prey Selection by <i>Bufo bufo </i>(L.)

Cited by 69 publications

References 17 publications

Water shrews detect movement, shape, and smell to find prey underwater

Water shrews detect movement, shape, and smell to find prey underwater

Tactile guidance of prey capture in Etruscan shrews

Question of prey feature detectors in the toad'sBufo bufo (L.) visual system: A correlation analysis

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