Preference or flexibility? Spatial navigation by Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) in a multiple-cue environment.

Abstract

We investigated if and how Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) show flexibility in their use of multiple sources of information in a spatial learning task. In Experiment 1, hamsters were trained to exit an arena through one of three doors. The goal, marked by a beacon, was fixed during the training phase. When the beacon was placed nearer to another door, the hamsters predominantly chose the original door rather than those with the relocated beacon (Tests A and C). The removal of the beacon had little effect on their performance (Test B). In Experiment 2, when we changed the shape of the apparatus to make the positional information of the goals other than the beacon invalid, a few individual subjects used the beacon (Test B'). However, after experiencing the invalidity of such positional information, the original door was less frequently chosen in a rerun of the beacon relocation test (Test C). Finally, in Experiment 3, we confirmed that hamsters could easily learn to use the beacon when it was the sole cue for navigation. These results suggest that, despite hamsters' limited tendency to use a beacon for navigation, they can flexibly use multiple strategies depending on their experience or environmental context.

Salience Beats Individual Cue Preferences

“…Being able to memorise current food locations can increase foraging efficiency [1,2]. Animals can use a range of environmental cues [3][4][5][6][7][8], which can be categorised into two main types: spatial cues and featural cues. Spatial cues provide information about the relative or absolute spatial relationships of local and global landmarks and the goal location [9,10], and are often seen as more salient (reliable) cues under stable environmental conditions [10].…”