Definition
Rodentia navigation refers to how rodents find their way about (i.e., to find food or water, or to return home), to the many strategies and mechanisms underlying spatially guided behavior. Rodents have a varied range of strategies, some innate and others learned, that help them to navigate, and when faced with a specific spatial task, the one they choose will depend both on their sensorial capacities and on the nature of the stimuli that are available (for reviews see Rodrigo 2002; Tommasi et al. 2012).
Background
Rodents can use different navigational strategies to locate a goal. Moreover, they can use a given strategy in a specific situation and under different conditions, use another one. The ability to find their way round their world is seen as of critical adaptive significance. Rodents can navigate using information based on conspecifics (social influences), on their own movement (i.e., dead...
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Chamizo, V.D., Rodrigo, T. (2022). Rodentia Navigation. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_804
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