Chimpanzees Can Navigate Virtual Environments
In search of virtual fruit, chimpanzees used landscape features for better orientation
Using touchscreen technology, six zoo-housed primates learned to navigate towards a distant virtual tree with different types of fruit underneath it, even working out how to find the landmark from different starting locations. Led by Matthias Allritz and Josep Call from the University of St Andrews and Francine Dolins at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, this is the first empirical study of how chimpanzees navigate an open-field naturalistic, virtual environment. It shows that chimpanzee navigation in the virtual world shares several key features with real-life navigation.
Publication: MATTHIAS ALLRITZ, et al., Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment, SCIENCE ADVANCES (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm4754
Original Story Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Alerts Sign-up