No food left behind: foraging route choices among free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in a multi-destination array at the Awajishima Monkey Center, Japan

Joyce, Megan Marie; Teichroeb, Julie A.; Kaigaishi, Yu; Stewart, Brogan M.; Yamada, Kazunori; Turner, Shirley

doi:10.1007/s10329-023-01070-z

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…According to our first prediction, the animals used routes consistent with heuristic strategies to choose their navigation paths more than expected by chance. Our results are in line with those described by Teichroeb ( 2015 ), Teichroeb and Smeltzer ( 2018 ), Kumpan et al ( 2019 ) and Joyce et al ( 2023 ), who also reported the use of heuristic strategies by vervet monkeys ( Chlorocebus pygerythrus ) and Japanese macaques ( Macaca fuscata ) to solve multi-destination routing problems. However, our second prediction was not supported, as GR strategies alone were not used more frequently than expected by chance during Condition II.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources

Xavier,

Abreu,

Souto

et al. 2024

Anim Cogn

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While foraging, animals have to find potential food sites, remember these sites, and plan the best navigation route. To deal with problems associated with foraging for multiple and patchy resources, primates may employ heuristic strategies to improve foraging success. Until now, no study has attempted to investigate experimentally the use of such strategies by a primate in a context involving foraging in large-scale space. Thus, we carried out an experimental field study that aimed to test if wild common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) employ heuristic strategies to efficiently navigate through multiple feeding sites distributed in a large-scale space. In our experiment, we arranged four feeding platforms in a trapezoid configuration with up to 60 possible routes and observe marmosets’ decisions under two experimental conditions. In experimental condition I, all platforms contained the same amount of food; in experimental condition II, the platforms had different amounts of food. According to the number and arrangement of the platforms, we tested two heuristic strategies: the Nearest Neighbor Rule and the Gravity Rule. Our results revealed that wild common marmosets prefer to use routes consistent with a heuristic strategy more than expected by chance, regardless of food distribution. The findings also demonstrate that common marmosets seem to integrate different factors such as distance and quantity of food across multiple sites distributed over a large-scale space, employing a combination of heuristic strategies to select the most efficient routes available. In summary, our findings confirm our expectations and provide important insights into the spatial cognition of these small neotropical primates.

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