  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 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.
