Abstract
Animals must make route choices every day when moving through their habitat while foraging. Choosing an optimal route can be cognitively costly, and primates and other animals have been shown to use simple heuristics, “rules of thumb”, to make foraging route choices. We investigated the potential use of heuristics among foraging free-ranging Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) during solitary foraging trials. We also investigated the potential influence of individual variables (age and sex) and social variables (presence in the central group, presence of potential inter- and intraspecific competitors), on the use of heuristics, route length and trial time. We used a multi-destination foraging experiment with 6 platforms in a (4 m × 8 m) Z-array, completed by 29 Japanese macaques in 155 runs at the Awajishima Monkey Center in Japan. Our results showed that the macaques chose routes consistent with heuristics (e.g. nearest neighbour heuristic 19.4%, convex hull heuristic 4.5%) and selected optimal routes (shortest path in 23.9% of the trials). We also identified a potential new heuristic that was used most frequently, that we termed the “sweep heuristic” (27.1% of trials), which we interpreted as a strategy to deal with competitive foraging trade-offs – choosing routes to prioritize not leaving isolated food pieces behind. Age was significantly related to trial time; juvenile macaques were faster than adults and young adults, using speed to gain access to resources. Solitary trials with conspecifics present took significantly longer routes. Our results suggest that contextual factors led to variation in Japanese macaque decision-making, and we suggest that the preferential use of a sweep heuristic may have been a response to high intragroup competition.
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Data are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to sincerely thank the Nobuhara family, especially T. and H. Nobuhara, for sharing their time and knowledge and for permission to conduct this research at Awajishima Monkey Center, to Dr M. Nakamichi and Dr K. Shimizu for their ongoing support, and to the communities of Hatada and Sumoto for welcoming us. We would also like to acknowledge that much of the work for this project took place on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. MMJ would like to thank M. and B. Joyce, and J. Ganz for their encouragement and support. Thank you to Dr A. MacIntosh and the staff at the Primate Research Institute and for their kindness in Japan, Dr K. Dunfield, and everyone in the PIES lab in Montreal. SET would like to thank Dr L. Fedigan, K. and K. Okada, and E. Watanabe for their support, and D. Matthews and S. Turner-Matthews for childcare at AMC.
Funding
Funding for this research was provided by MITACs Globalink, Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science Student Excellence Award, Concordia University, and the Fonds de recherche Nature et technologies under grant number 2019-NC-254267. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
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Conceptualization: MMJ, SET, JAT. Fieldwork, data collection and monkey ID: MMJ, SE. Turner: YK, BM Stewart. Research Facilitation: YK, KY. Methodology: MMJ, SE Turner, JA Teichroeb. Formal analysis and investigation: MM Joyce. Writing—original draft preparation: MM Joyce. Writing—review and editing: MM Joyce, SE Turner, JA Teichroeb, Y Kaigaishi, BM Stewart, K Yamada. Funding acquisition: MM Joyce, SE Turner. Supervision: SE Turner.
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The multi-destination foraging array experiment relied exclusively on the voluntary participation of individual monkeys. The experiments themselves are situational and non-invasive. Since the monkeys at the Awajishima Monkey Center are provision-fed by humans on a regular basis, the added food-table arrays in the feeding areas did not alter the existing human–animal dynamics. Additionally, participation did not impact the monkey’s overall balance of wild foraging and human-provisioned food consumption, nor did it change the contact they have with humans. All research was approved by Concordia University’s Animal Research Ethics Committee (protocol number 30009663) and satisfied the requirements for ethical research practice designated by the Awajishima Monkey Center.
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Joyce, M.M., Teichroeb, J.A., Kaigaishi, Y. et al. No food left behind: foraging route choices among free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in a multi-destination array at the Awajishima Monkey Center, Japan. Primates 64, 495–511 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-023-01070-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-023-01070-z