Scientists from northwestern University found that complex landscapes containing trees, shrubs, boulders and hills may have helped land animals to develop higher intelligence as compared to their ancestors living in the water. The corresponding article was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Compared to the open water, drying is rife with obstacles and tricky terrain. This allows the production of better hiding from predators, and predators — to make the ambush. Such a complex environment may have helped the animal to develop the ability to predict the behavior of the victims, and not to use instincts and habits.
However, the researchers found that planning gave our ancestors superiority on all types of landscapes. Modeling scientists shows that there are some “level obstacles Goldilocks”. This means that obstacles in the landscape should be not too much and not too little for the perception of a predator. In this interval, the ability to plan his and others ‘ actions becomes an important quality that determines the success of a hunt. In simple landscapes, such as open area or in a highly complex, such as thick jungle, this advantage is eroding.
In previous work, the researchers showed that when the animals began to go ashore 385 million years ago, they got the ability to see about one hundred times further than before was able to see in the water. Then, the authors suggested, due to the acquisition of this ability the predators and the victims had to increase the energy consumption of the brain. However, supercomputer modeling for a new study has shown that, although such a vision is needed for the purchase of benefits associated with the prediction of the actions of other individuals, this is not enough. In addition, as shown by scientists also needed a certain structure of the area.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers developed a computational simulation to check the survival of the prey on which the predator hunts actively during two different strategies of decision-making. The first was based on the habit to hunt that way, and the second was based on planning, in which the algorithm chose one of several scenarios. The team created a simple open world, with no visual barriers for the imitation of water world. Then they added objects of different density to simulate land.
In simple water and ground conditions considered in the study, the survival rate of extraction in the case of both strategies was low. The same can be said about the high density environments of the landscape, such as coral reefs and dense tropical forests. However, when areas of vegetation and terrain interspersed with wide open spaces similar on the Savannah, the ability to plan led to huge gains in survival compared with the usual strategy. Because planning increases the chances of survival, the researchers suggest that this behavior is entrenched in the course of evolution in the brains of animals.
