Sorry I haven't replied. Been a bit busy trying to choose a new piece of software.

Anyway, here is where I was coming from. I can vaguely remember one of my high-school teachers telling me (many, many moons ago) that the chinese(?) used to make maps that weren't showing the land from a birds eye view but rather what the traveller would see as they were travelling. I then combined this with a notion from a Piers Anthony novel (Of Man and Manta) in which a species of alien see by LADAR (LASER RADAR) and thus have a very, very narrow field of view. That is just one alien form of perception that might be interesting to translate to maps. Then there is the obvious of maps with based on SONAR.

I really like the idea of mapping pheromone trails. But as rdanhenry pointed out they aren't permanent. Sort of pointless to map them unless the maps were being constantly updated.