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Flexibility of cue use in the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger)

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Abstract

Recent work on captive flying squirrels has demonstrated a novel degree of flexibility in the use of different orientation cues. In the present study, we examine to what extent this flexibility is present in a free-ranging population of another tree squirrel species, the fox squirrel. We trained squirrels to a rewarded location within a square array of four feeders and then tested them on transformations of the array that either pitted two cue types against one cue type, the majority tests, or all cue types against each other, the forced-hierarchy test. In Experiment 1, squirrels reoriented to the two-cue-type location in all majority tests and to the location indicated by the visual features of the feeders in the forced-hierarchy test. This preference for visual features runs contrary to previous studies that report the use of spatial cues over visual features in food-storing species. In Experiments 2–5 we tested squirrels with different trial orders (Experiments 2 and 3), a different apparatus (Experiment 4) and at different times of the year (Experiment 5) to determine why these squirrels had chosen to orient using visual features in the first experiment. Like captive flying squirrels, free-ranging fox squirrels showed a large degree of flexibility in their use of cues. Furthermore, their cue use appeared to be sensitive both to changes in the test apparatus and the season in which we tested. Altogether our results suggest that the study of free-ranging animals over a variety of conditions is necessary for understanding spatial cognition.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank José Lopez and Ted Claire for constructing the feeders, Stephen Lea and participants from Berkeley Behavior Lunch and Comparative Cognition Tea for constructive comments on the manuscript. We would also like to thank Cindy Lau for her help in collecting the data. The research was supported by a grant from the University Committee on Research and by a sabbatical appointment to L.J. at the Santa Fe Institute. The research followed federal and university animal care and use rules and guidelines and complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of animals.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1650, USA

    Anna S. Waisman & Lucia F. Jacobs

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  1. Anna S. Waisman
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  2. Lucia F. Jacobs
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Correspondence to Anna S. Waisman.

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Waisman, A.S., Jacobs, L.F. Flexibility of cue use in the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger). Anim Cogn 11, 625–636 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0152-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0152-5

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