摘要
In order to optimize foraging efficiency and avoid toxicosis, animals must be able to detect, discriminate, and learn about the predictive signals of potential food. Primates are typically regarded as animals that rely mainly on their highly developed visual systems, and little is known about the role that the other senses may play in food selection. It was therefore the aim of the present study to assess which senses are involved in the evaluation of food by two species of New World primates: the squirrel monkey and the spider monkey. To this end, six animals per species were repeatedly presented with both familiar and novel food items, and their behavior was videotaped and analyzed. To obtain a further indication of the relative importance of visual and chemosensory cues, the animals were also presented with familiar food items that were experimentally modified in color, odor, or both color and odor. The results demonstrate that squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys use olfactory, gustatory, and tactile cues in addition to visual information to evaluate novel food, whereas they mainly inspect familiar food items visually prior to consumption. Our findings also show that in both species the use of nonvisual cues decreased rapidly with repeated presentations of novel food, suggesting a fast multimodal learning process. Further, the two species clearly differ in their relative use of nonvisual cues when evaluating novel or modified food, with spider monkeys relying more on olfactory cues than squirrel monkeys, and squirrel monkeys relying more on tactile cues compared to spider monkeys. Am. J. Primatol. 69:1–13, 2007. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
摘要译文
为了优化觅食效率，避免中毒，动物必须能够检测，鉴别，并了解潜在的食物的预测信号。灵长类动物通常被看作是主要依靠高度发达的视觉系统的动物，很少有人知道，其他感官可能在食物选择方面发挥的作用。因此，它是本研究的目的是评估涉及食品的评价其感官由两个物种新世界灵长类的：松鼠猴和蜘蛛猴。为此，每种六只动物被反复呈现既熟悉又新颖食品，和他们的行为进行了录像并进行分析。以获得的视觉和化学感受提示的相对重要性，进一步表明，动物也呈现与进行了实验改性在颜色，气味熟悉食品项目，或颜色和气味。结果表明，松鼠猴和蜘蛛猴使用嗅觉，味觉和触觉提示除了视觉信息来评估新型食品，而他们主要考察熟悉的食物视觉消费前。我们的研究结果还表明，在这两个物种的利用不可见的线索迅速与新型食品反复演示下降，这表明一个多快的学习过程。而且，这两个物种在评估新的或修改的食物显然会有不同的使用相对不可见的线索，蜘蛛猴嗅觉上比线索松鼠猴依靠更多，和松鼠猴更多地依靠相比，蜘蛛猴触觉提示。上午。 J. Primatol。 69：1-13，2007年。
Matthias Laska[*]; Pamela Freist and Stephanie Krause;. Which senses play a role in nonhuman primate food selection? A comparison between squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys[J]. American Journal of Primatology, 2007,69(3): 282-294