Abstract: Abstract  We present the theoretical and practical difficulties of inferring the cognitive processes involved in spatial movement decisions of primates and other animals based on studies of their foraging behavior in the wild. Because the possible cognitive processes involved in foraging are not known a priori for a given species, some observed spatial movements could be consistent with a large number of processes ranging from simple undirected search processes to strategic goal-oriented travel. Two basic approaches can help to reveal the cognitive processes: (1) experiments designed to test specific mechanisms; (2) comparison of observed movements with predicted ones based on models of hypothesized foraging modes (ideally, quantitative ones). We describe how these two approaches have been applied to evidence for spatial knowledge of resources in primates, and for various hypothesized goals of spatial decisions in primates, reviewing what is now established. We conclude with a synthesis emphasizing what kinds of spatial movement data on unmanipulated primate populations in the wild are most useful in deciphering goal-oriented processes from random processes. Basic to all of these is an estimate of the animals ability to detect resources during search. Given knowledge of the animals detection ability, there are several observable patterns of resource use incompatible with a pure search process. These patterns include increasing movement speed when approaching versus leaving a resource, increasingly directed movement toward more valuable resources, and directed travel to distant resources from many starting locations. Thus, it should be possible to assess and compare spatial cognition across a variety of primate species and thus trace its ecological and evolutionary correlates.

Abstract: Most horses have a side on which they are easier to handle and a direction they favour when working on a circle, and recent studies have suggested a correlation between emotion and visual laterality when horses observe inanimate objects. As such lateralisation could provide important clues regarding the horse’s cognitive processes, we investigated whether horses also show laterality in association with people. We gave horses the choice of entering a chute to left or right, with and without the passive, non-interactive presence of a person unknown to them. The left eye was preferred for scanning under both conditions, but significantly more so when a person was present. Traditionally, riders handle horses only from the left, so we repeated the experiment with horses specifically trained on both sides. Again, there was a consistent preference for left eye scanning in the presence of a person, whether known to the horses or not. We also examined horses interacting with a person, using both traditionally and bilaterally trained horses. Both groups showed left eye preference for viewing the person, regardless of training and test procedure. For those horses tested under both passive and interactive conditions, the left eye was preferred significantly more during interaction. We suggest that most horses prefer to use their left eye for assessment and evaluation, and that there is an emotional aspect to the choice which may be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances. We believe these results have important practical implications and that emotional laterality should be taken into account in training methods.