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Object permanence in lemurs

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Abstract

Object permanence, the ability to mentally represent objects that have disappeared from view, should be advantageous to animals in their interaction with the natural world. The objective of this study was to examine whether lemurs possess object permanence. Thirteen adult subjects representing four species of diurnal lemur (Eulemur fulvus rufus, Eulemur mongoz, Lemur catta and Hapalemur griseus) were presented with seven standard Piagetian visible and invisible object displacement tests, plus one single visible test where the subject had to wait predetermined times before allowed to search, and two invisible tests where each hiding place was made visually unique. In all visible tests lemurs were able to find an object that had been in clear view before being hidden. However, when lemurs were not allowed to search for up to 25-s, performance declined with increasing time-delay. Subjects did not outperform chance on any invisible displacements regardless of whether hiding places were visually uniform or unique, therefore the upper limit of object permanence observed was Stage 5b. Lemur species in this study eat stationary foods and are not subject to stalking predators, thus Stage 5 object permanence is probably sufficient to solve most problems encountered in the wild.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Penelope Bodry-Saunders and the Board of Directors of the Lemur Conservation Foundation in Myakka City, Florida, for allowing access to the lemurs and especially Brian Grossi for his assistance. At Eckerd College we thank Dr. Jim MacDougall and Dr. Peter Meylan. We greatly acknowledge Dr. John Robinson at Stony Brook University for his contributions and support. We thank the editor and four anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments that greatly improved this paper. This study was approved by the Lemur Conservation Foundation Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and conforms to federal guidelines for the use of animals in research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Anja M. Deppe

  2. Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Patricia C. Wright

  3. Department of Biology, Eckerd College, St Petersburg, FL, 33711, USA

    Anja M. Deppe & William A. Szelistowski

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  1. Anja M. Deppe
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Correspondence to Anja M. Deppe.

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Deppe, A.M., Wright, P.C. & Szelistowski, W.A. Object permanence in lemurs. Anim Cogn 12, 381–388 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0197-5

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