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Chimps Have a Built-In GPS
destinyland writes "European researchers have discovered that chimpanzees have a built-in mental GPS, keeping 'a geometric mental map of their home range, moving from point to point in nearly straight lines.' Using GPS, two primatologists followed 15 chimpanzees for 217 days, and determined that the apes were 'using a mental map built around geometric coordinates.' They're not just identifying landmarks in their surroundings, and in fact, even when swinging through trees, the chimps planned out their route several trees in advance. Here's the paper in the journal Animal Behavior."
$31.50 is pretty expensive for a paper which will say that a certain mammal can remember where it has been and can find its way back to that spot, much like most other mammals.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Calling it GPS implies they are using external signals to locate. The article says the chimps are creating and using internal distance transform maps.
1. Create pay per paper site
2. Get shitty story submitted by kdawson
3. Massive profit
Sadly most research is behind a paywall. It doesn't make it a slashvertisment though - there was enough detail in the linked article to see that the researchers are talking bollocks, and that the actual paper is unnecessary.
GPS uses time of flight between known landmarks. The fact that the landmarks are actually moving in orbit is irrelevant. The researchers argue that chimps don't use landmarks as reference points, but instead use a geometric layout of their territory. This is called dead-reckoning.
Edit: Preview suggests that I may be a little harsh. Their research itself may be valid and worthy. But their attempt to dumb it down for "the kids" without understanding the comparison that they are making is stupid.
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No they don't. Drop them somewhere they've never been before and ask them to go somewhere else they've never been before and they'll either pull funny faces at you or initiate a poo barrage.
Tell me again, what does the G in GPS stand for? It sure doesn't stand for "having a reasonable memory of your surroundings and a rough sense of direction". And neither do the P or the S.
Bullshit summary again. Or maybe bullshit article. Who cares? After a while, you don't bother.
At the bottom of the
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
My cat can do that. If she wants to come upstairs in my house, she'll walk in a straight line to the bottom of the staircase from wherever she is, up the stairs, and in a straight line from there to wherever she wants to be.
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"... I never knew she was so talented.
I would think most semi-complex animals have this ability.
Read Pynchon.
So the real question is... how do I filter kdawson out of my RSS feed?
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