The sensory basis of prey detection in captive-born grey mouse lemurs, Microcebus murinus

Abstract

The sensory bases of food detection, food location and food choice in nocturnal primates are poorly understood. Grey mouse lemurs, Microcebus murinus, are omnivorous nocturnal strepsirhines and generally regarded a good model for the most ancestral primate condition. We set up a series of choice experiments in a controlled laboratory environment to investigate the roles of acoustic, olfactory and visual cues and the importance of unimodal versus multimodal cues for prey perception in this species. Subjects in our study were able to find hidden prey better than expected by chance using any of the three sensory modalities tested; that is, any of the cues provided was sufficient and none was indispensably necessary to trigger prey detection. Availability of visual cues alone enabled successful prey detection in >90% of trials. Detection performance increased with the number of modalities available. Taken together, our data identify vision as a key modality for prey detection in captive-born grey mouse lemurs and at the same time stress the role of multimodal information for successful foraging in this nocturnal primate.