Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 369, Issue 6500, Pages 188-+Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aax6904
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Funding
- Minerva Center for Movement Ecology
- Minerva Foundation
- ISF grant [ISF-965/15]
- Adelina and Massimo Della Pergola Chair of Life Sciences
- Israel President Scholarship
- [ISF-1316/05]
- [ISF-1259/09]
- [GIF 1316/15]
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Seven decades of research on the cognitive map, the allocentric representation of space, have yielded key neurobiological insights, yet field evidence from free-ranging wild animals is still lacking. Using a system capable of tracking dozens of animals simultaneously at high accuracy and resolution, we assembled a large dataset of 172 foraging Egyptian fruit bats comprising >18 million localizations collected over 3449 bat-nights across 4 years. Detailed track analysis, combined with translocation experiments and exhaustive mapping of fruit trees, revealed that wild bats seldom exhibit random search but instead repeatedly forage in goal-directed, long, and straight flights that include frequent shortcuts. Alternative, non-map-based strategies were ruled out by simulations, time-lag embedding, and other trajectory analyses. Our results are consistent with expectations from cognitive map-like navigation and support previous neurobiological evidence from captive bats.
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