Quote Originally Posted by Chebmaster View Post
Creatures IRL use actual pathfinding as the last resort to conserve brain power.
Normally they rely on life-hacks like memorizing a route once found (even if it's not optimal), the right/left hand rule for going around obstacles and other such.

For example: I had a dog once, many years ago. I was walking it, and it ran behind a wire mesh fence with a hole in it. Then followed me until she ran into a corner. Whoops.
So what did she do seeing me going ahead? She whined, she ran back and forth along the fence several times (using right/left hand algorithm of obstacle avoidance). Then she looked at me one more time and I practically felt that click in her brain as she dashed hurriedly back to the hole.
The question is: did she use A* or was it a modified breadcrumbs algorithm as she clearly knew the path I followed and her point of departure from that path?
Ha that's a wonderful observation - I think the subject is better discussed on an evolutionary biology forum or some such place - even more incredible to my mind is the ability of birds to travel half way round the world to the same lake - or even more incredible is frogs returning to the pond from which they spawned in order to mate - I'd say breadcrumbs but a few years ago the garden at my old house was completely remodelled - new fences put up and a gate installed at the back of the garden.

Next year I was outside and I noticed frogs hopping in from under the gate to get to the pond - a path that was previously completely blocked off by the topography of the garden - did they breadcrumb to the general vicinity and then left-right until they found a gap? did those frogs just happen to come from that direction and get lucky?