Non-random walks in monkeys and humans

Abstract

Principles of self-organization play an increasingly central role in models of human activity. Notably, individual human displacements exhibit strongly recurrent patterns that are characterized by scaling laws and can be mechanistically modelled as self-attracting walks. Recurrence is not, however, unique to human displacements. Here we report that the mobility patterns of wild capuchin monkeys are not random walks, and they exhibit recurrence properties similar to those of cell phone users, suggesting spatial cognition mechanisms shared with humans. We also show that the highly uneven visitation patterns within monkey home ranges are not entirely self-generated but are forced by spatio-temporal habitat heterogeneities. If models of human mobility are to become useful tools for predictive purposes, they will need to consider the interaction between memory and environmental heterogeneities.