PSYC 305 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Spatial Memory, Wayfinding, Biological Specificity
Document Summary
The adaptive significance of finding the way: ultimate explanations for "why" animals are able to move through their environment without getting lost. 5. 1. 2 adaptive value: examined in terms of the behaviours of caching and migration, animals who live in places where food is drastically less plentiful at certain times of the year cache food way more than animals who don"t. Ecological pressures have also shaped how animals are able to find the way during migration. Selection tends to favor migration when there are predictable variations in environmental conditions across seasons. Short distance migration preceded long distance migration: physiological changes like larger wing span and increased capacity to store fat helped facilitate long-distance migration, cognitive processes also evolved in this matter. Orientation: an angle measured with respect to a reference (home location, previous direction, external force: the process of taking up a particular bearing regardless of the ultimate destination.
