Abstract

Primate foraging can be construed as a set of interconnected problems that include finding food, selecting efficient travel routes, anticipating the positions of moving prey, and manipulating, and occasionally, extracting food items using tools. The evidence reviewed in this paper strongly suggests that both monkeys and apes use three types of representation (i.e., static, dynamic, and relational) to solve various problems. Static representations involve recalling certain features of the environment, dynamic representations involve imagining changes in the trajectories of moving objects, and relational representations involve encoding the properties of objects in relation to other objects. Contrary to previous claims, no clear differences were found between the representational skills of monkeys and apes. Current evidence also suggests that primates may be better at representing general compared to specific problem features. Finally, we have characterized the domains of space and objects as complementary and indicated future lines of research in these domains.