Monkeys navigate using mental maps just like us

摘要

BLACK howler monkeys move through their environment using mental maps that they modify and adapt as the landscape changes - a skill previously seen only in humans. In 2016, Miguel de Guinea at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and his colleagues spent a year in Palenque National Park, Mexico, tracking groups of black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) to see how they cross the landscape. While most animals move through an environment semirandomly or by instinct, humans are different. We tend to follow familiar routes encoded in mental maps. We also have a spatial sense of how locations are arranged in the landscape. This means that if an obstacle blocks a familiar path, we can change course - perhaps switching to another familiar route heading in a different direction - to navigate the obstacle and still reach our desired destination.