Spatial mapping shows that some African elephants use cognitive maps to navigate the core but not the periphery of their home ranges
Open accessAbstract
Strategies of navigation have been shown to play a critical role when animals revisit resource sites across large home ranges. The habitual route system appears to be a sufficient strategy for animals to navigate while avoiding the cognitive cost of traveling using the Euclidean map. We hypothesize that wild elephants travel more frequently using habitual routes to revisit resource sites as opposed to using the Euclidean map. To identify the elephants' habitual routes, we created a python script, which accounted for frequently used route segments that constituted the habitual routes. Results showed elephant navigation flexibility traveling at Kruger National Park landscape. Elephants shift strategies of navigation depend on the familiarity of their surroundings. In the core area of their home range, elephants traveled using the Euclidean map, but intraindividual differences showed that elephants were then converted to habitual routes when navigating within the less familiar periphery of their home range. These findings are analogous to the recent experimental results found in smaller mammals that showed that rats encode locations according to their familiarity with their surroundings. In addition, as recently observed in monkeys, intersections of habitual routes are important locations used by elephants when making navigation decisions. We found a strong association between intersections and new segment usage by elephants when they revisit resource sites, suggesting that intersection choice may contribute to the spatial representations elephants use when repeatedly revisiting resource sites.
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The only three studies that directly investigate memory in wild elephants were conducted on African savanna elephants.
“Indeed, to our knowledge, the only three studies that directly investigate memory in wild elephants were conducted on African savanna elephants (Polansky et al., 2015; Presotto et al., 2019; Tsalyuk et al., 2019).”
From Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation (2025) · cites this paper as Presotto et al., 2019
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- Authors
- Presotto, A., Fayrer-Hosken, R., Curry, C., & Madden, M.
- Affiliations
- San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research (US)
- Salisbury University (US)
- University of Georgia (US)
- Venue
- Animal Cognition
- Published
- 2019-01-28
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 251-263
- ISSN
- 1435-9448 (ISSN-L)
- 1435-9456
- OpenAlex
- W2911886592
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 3.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Animal Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Maryland Shared Open Access Repository (USMAI Consortium) (submittedVersion)
- Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- Loxodonta africana, navigation strategies, cognitive maps, home range, spatial memory, within-person variability, spatial representation, Kruger National Park
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cognition, Elephants, Homing Behavior, Ecosystem, Recognition, Psychology
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