UC Davis

Memory and learning distinguish the movement of animals from other things, resulting in trajectories that change over time, but still repeatedly return to specific locations. The frequency and predictability with which animals return to favored locations, and the patterns of change in the paths they use to get there, offer insights into the cognitive systems of learning and memory that guide them. For animals that rely on resources that are concentrated in sparsely distributed, high value patches, these systems are particularly important for avoiding the costs of inefficient random-search foraging. In this thesis, I analyze the trajectories of such animals across multiple contexts and spatial scales, particularly the trajectories of primates and kinkajous (animals that look and behaves much like a primate, but are in fact *Carnivoran*). I find that most of these animals are quick to learn efficient paths between foraging locations, and some are able to generalize strategies for efficient navigation to novel contexts. There is some evidence that more selective foragers rely more on routine 'traplines' between multiple known locations, but are faster to deploy strategies that exploit changing resource distributions. Taken together, results of these studies suggest that diverse animal species integrate episodic-like memories into a cognitive map that helps them plan movements over large distances. Evidence that kinkajous flexibly use knowledge of detailed route-networks through complex canopy substrate to quickly find and exploit new resources, is particularly important because it highlights that the advanced development of these cognitive systems is not unique to primates and their socially complex groups, but may evolve readily in response to particular resource distributions and environmental properties.