Visually guided navigation in early primates

Breakthroughs in Understanding Natural Behaviour and its Neural Underpinnings (University of Manchester, UK) (2024) Proc Physiol Soc 61, SA03

Research Symposium: Visually guided navigation in early primates

Daniel Huber1,

1University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland,

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Vision, the key sensory modality for primates, plays an important role in navigation. In the case of nocturnal primates, such as the mouse lemurs, the visual system has evolved to adapt to low-light environments. Despite the darkness, mouse lemurs navigate through dense forest by leaping across tree branches. This complex behavior heavily relies on visual guidance to estimate the distance and landing target. How mouse lemurs perform these incredible jumps in darkness, and how their ability to do so is affected by other environmental factors, remains an open question. To investigate this matter we designed a novel jumping framework for mouse lemurs using the latest version of the EthoLoop system (www.etholoop.org). EthoLoop is an optical animal tracking system designed for small animals, not only to track their spatial position (~800Hz), but also to provide continuous close-up views while freely roaming in their natural habitat. Taking advantage of the real-time position tracking we control multiple wireless feeding platforms and are able to reinforce behavior, such as  jumping in a reproducible manner. This provides a rich dataset of the kinematics of individual jumps, enabling comparison across sessions with different illumination settings. In parallel, we have taken the first step to study the navigation of freely moving mouse lemurs in their natural habitat. Here we will present our preliminary result using the battery powered version of the EthoLoop system in the heart of Kirindy forest of western Madagascar.



Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.

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