TB10 - Animal Learning and Cognition Flashcards
How do animals know where they are?
A lot of animals use olfactory senses to follow urine, pheromone or chemical trails.
What is path integration?
This is an internal sense of direction and distance to help animals reach their goal from a location.
How are landmarks helpful for animal travel?
They can be used as proximal visual cues to the goal.
What is template matching?
This is when animals take a retinal screenshot of a landmark from the goal, so they understand the direction and distance.
What do bees do when dealing with multiple landmarks?
They can use compass bearings. When landmarks were kept in the same position but had their degrees from North changed, bees were unable to find their way.
What evidence is there for bees using sun navigation?
Bees were kept inside with the light coming on 3 hours earlier than the sun would’ve come up to change their internal body clock.
Before their internal body clock shifted, they used the sun to find the same flower at 9am and 6am. However, at 9am with an internal clock of 6am, they went the same degrees away from the sun than they did at 6am previously, and so they went for a different flower. This shows they rely on the sun to guide them.
What is a cognitive map?
An internal representation of a plan of space. Spatial relationships between objects are represented.
What is a topographic map vs a euclidean map?
Topographic - A map relying on knowledge of landmarks and familiar routes between them.
Euclidean - This is a representation of the space that relies on geometrical properties of the environment such as angles, distances and cardinal directions.
What has research shown with regards to chimpanzees and navigation?
They use euclidean maps as they manage to take the fastest route and their initial travel direction does not differ from their final travel direction.
What has research shown with regards to rats and navigation?
Rats are seen to have cognitive maps as after finding a platform in milky water once, they are able to find it quickly from a different start point. However, they swim randomly until they find it when the platform itself is moved.
Where might be involved in navigation in the brain?
Neural correlates have been found in place cells in the hippocampus. These cells have been found to respond to specific places in a maze, places relative to landmarks and places in a room regardless to landmarks.
They do not respond to compass bearings.
What cues can be used by birds when travelling long distances?
Magnetic fields, a sun compass, UV light, air pressure for altitude.
How do animals learn migration pathways?
They follow others on their first migration but then do it themselves next time.
Turtles use olfactory cues, whilst birds use a celestial compass.
What evidence is there for birds’ celestial compass?
Indigo buntings migrate south every autumn, and flew south when placed into a planetarium with correctly moving star patterns. When the stars moved on a different axis they flew randomly.
What is habituation to a stimulus?
Animals get used to it - with every stimuli presentation, the initial response decreases.
