There are multiple ways an animal can find its way around an environment. It is very common for animals to navigate via the use of landmarks and beacons, which they sometimes use to generate cognitive maps. A landmark is defined as an object or structure distinguishable from the background environment that gives information about the position of and direction to a goal. A beacon is defined as an object or structure distinguishable from the background environment that is near a goal and marks its location. A cognitive map is defined as an image of the environment stored in the animal’s memory and is considered present when an animal can generate a novel route to a goal. The use of landmarks has been demonstrated in animals as different as wasps and birds. Concerning wasps, a test was done where a circle of pinecones was placed around the wasp’s nest and once the wasp left, the circle was moved. When the wasp returned, it looked for its nest in the circle of pinecones rather than at the nest’s actual location, which evidenced its use of landmarks. Birds are not only able to use landmarks, as was shown in hummingbirds when poles were used to demarcate flower location and that when the landmarks were moved they followed the landmarks rather than the flower’s actual location, but also the use of cognitive maps. Clark’s nutcrackers have been shown to be able to recognise the relative location of objects, which has been considered evidence of cognitive mapping. In a test where seeds were buried halfway between two landmarks, the nutcrackers managed to consistently locate the seeds even as the landmarks were pushed closer to one another or pulled further apart. In each trial, the birds found the seeds by going to the halfway point between the landmarks rather than looking for the seeds using absolute distance as would be the case if they were solely employing landmarks as indicators of distance.
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