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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."
From the 2nd link: "Price: US $ 31.50". Sounds like another slashvertorial. No thanks, chimps.
Does it run Linux?
Calling it GPS implies they are using external signals to locate. The article says the chimps are creating and using internal distance transform maps.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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
I must have missed all the Chimp satellite launches, when did they happen?
Few people know this, but he actually knows what the next three days of Slashdot articles are going to be. Even breaking news articles, he's already taken it into account and written it up ahead of time. He knows what you are going to submit before you do.
...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 can someone please explain to me our cousin species can manage to navigate such dense forest with such high precision while many of my highly-intelligent ex girlfriends managed to get lost so easily on short walks.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Yeah - TFA says the chimps kept mental maps of their surroundings, and it was the researchers that used GPS because it all looked like jungle to them. That's different from migratory birds or insects which apparently use magnetic fields or sunlight angles for navigation.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I agree. Why does this type of thing surprise anyone? Oh, that's right. Some people think humans are somehow, er, special beings .
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
With this built-in GPS, would chimp-mounted lasers be more accurate than shark-mounted ones?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I already knew this. Why do we spend such money on research? Think about it, have you ever had a chimp ask you for directions?
At least only one of those apply to my tomtom
They have JPS: Jungle Positioning System
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
Yeah, I was thinking that this is just a bit of "dead reckoning," combined with old salty pirate skills:
"Arrrgh, when yee see the rock, that looks like the skull of a monkey, turn left, take twenty paces, and the treasure is buried below. But beware the curse . . ."
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"...
Just to be on the safe side, see if your cat can perform the same trick, while wearing a tinfoil hat. And please get back to us if she can. Maybe those felines are up to something behind our backs.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
My daughter is 19 months old. Almost as soon as she could walk at 13 months she was navigating the house on her own. She knew how to get back to her room from the kitchen, three doors, two rooms and a hallway away. Heck, she couldn't even open the doors on her own, but she sure could toddle over to them and squeak until we did it for her. :)
It's not like we taught her how to remember 2d layouts and navigate them. She just did it.
She's my first kid, and I'm learning more about intelligence and learning from watching her than I ever did in all of my AI classes.
Another example: she loves sitting in the driver's seat of our car, playing with the steering wheel and the keys. The first time she did it she was holding the keys in her left hand, but the ignition is on the right side of the steering column. She tried reaching over to put the keys in, but immediately realized she couldn't reach, so she switched the keys to her right hand. Do you know how difficult it would be to code up that kind of coordination and reasoning process in a robot? Frikkin' hard! But she just did it.
It's helped me realize just how much behavior and intelligence is hard coded in our brains. There's a lot that my wife and I are teaching my daughter, but there's no way we could have taught her everything she now knows, and I seriously doubt she's figured it all out by mimicry. (Especially the complex skills and problem solving behavior.) So the idea that a primate could have a "built in" mental mapping ability makes perfect sense now that I've seen such a thing in action.