Temporal integration and decision-making in crocodiles

To make appropriate behavioural decisions, animals continuously process a flow of information provided by different sensory channels. Could temporality, i.e. the order in which independent stimuli are perceived, lead the animal to give greater importance to one stimulus than to another? Here we show that the decision of a crocodile to move preferentially towards the source of water surface waves than towards the source of an airborne sound is irrespective of the relative time of arrival of the sound and water vibrations to the animal, as long as the delay between these two stimuli does not exceed a few seconds. To test whether the late arrival of water waves - which travel more slowly than sound - could explain crocodiles' preference for the source of water waves, we controlled the relative timing of stimulus arrival within a time window of a few seconds. Our results reveal that crocodiles preferentially move towards the source of the water waves, whether they arrive after, at the same time as, or before the sound. This suggests that the temporal integration of information from different sensory channels can occur within a certain time window, where the behavioural decision-making remains independent of the arrival order of stimuli. The maximum delay between simultaneously evaluated stimuli probably depends on animal species and context.