O Grape, Where Art Thou? A Study of Spatial Cognition in Two Lemur Species (Lemur catta and Eulemur fulvus rufus) in a Laboratory Foraging Setting

Lisa Pytka

Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Keywords

Primate, Lemur, Spatial Cognition, Foraging

Area of Concentration

Biological Psychology

Abstract

Foraging is universal; most, if not all animals are required to forage for food. Primates occupy many different foraging niches in a wide range of habitats, yet, primates are all closely phylogenetically related. Hence, primates are an interesting taxon in which to explore the interaction of biological and environmental pressures on cognitive processing. Lemurs, prosimians, are rarely studied in cognitive tasks, but present especially interesting opportunities for studying cognition due to their rapid speciation in a small but geographically varied area, Madagascar. In this study, two species of lemurs (Lemur catta and Eulemur fulvus rufus) performed in a study of foraging and spatial cognition. The lemurs foraged in a naturalistic apparatus similar to ones used in previous work on spatial cognition in primates. In this apparatus, lemurs searched for hidden grapes. An analysis of their search strategies revealed that the lemurs demonstrated use of spatial learning in the basic search task (i.e., they extracted all grapes when all holes were baited) and decreased in search efficiency and spatial search efficiency following a five-minute delay in a working memory task. A third study demonstrated that lemurs were not solving the task through olfactory cueing.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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