Sciences en bulles" comic strip: beware of the gorilla's memory

This excerpt from the "Sciences en bulles" comic strip is published as part of the Fête de la science (October 2 to 12, 2020 in mainland France, and November 6 to 16 in overseas territories and internationally), of which The Conversation France is a partner. The theme of this year's event is "Planet Nature? Find all the debates and events in your region on the Fetedelascience.fr website.

Benjamin Robira, University of Montpellier

Peb&Fox/Syndicat national de l'édition, CC BY-NC-ND.

It's a cliché to depict lush, resource-rich jungles all year round. The jungles of West Africa and the Congolese Basin, home to the Western Lowland Gorilla, are in fact markedly seasonal, with periods of fruit abundance alternating with periods of scarcity.

Despite this wide variation, the gorilla maintains an energetic balance. This is partly due to the diversity of foods that make up its diet: leaves, flowers, fruit, mushrooms and even insects.

But there is also speculation about its ability to correctly locate some of these foods, such as fruit, in time and space. Indeed, it is generally considered that, in the course of evolution, there have been selection pressures on individuals of species living in a complex environment, where resources can be scarce and fluctuating. These pressures have favored the development of cognition, enabling better prediction of what type of food is available where and when. This would partly explain the cognitive differences observed in the animal world.

A computational approach, in which the behavior of hypothetical individuals is simulated by computer, confirms the idea of spatial and temporal awareness.

In the case of a variable but predictable environment such as that in which the gorilla evolves, this ability to locate food in space and time substantially increases the success of food provisioning. It also reduces the cost of the search, particularly the distance covered.

The wild groups are named after the alpha male - also known as the "silverback" due to the depigmentation of the dorsal hair following puberty. Daily monitoring of these groups enables us to see whether reality matches theoretical expectations.

We then observe that gorillas target certain locations precisely when resources are available, and move there linearly and rapidly. The next step is to understand what form this spatio-temporal knowledge takes. mind map of resources ? And do they have a precise timetable in mind for each one's availability?The Conversation

Benjamin Robira, PhD student, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.