Effects of social context on caching strategies by srub jays

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Project objective

Western scrub jays hide food for future consumption and rely on memory to recover their food at a later date. However, this behavior can be exploited by other individuals, who may observe Storers hiding food and pilfer their caches later by remembering where the Storers had cached. This proposal will investigate the social strategies and the underlying cognitive processes that mediate food caching by Western scrub jays. Using controlled experimental designs we will investigate which behavioral strategies Starers employ to avoid being pilfered (i.e. cache out of sight of the Observer, block the view of potential pilferers, delay caching, re-cache caches made in the presence of Observers) and how the Observers maximize the chance of successful pilfering (i.e. not only the location but also the content of the cache, and if perishable, the relative time since caching; and be as inconspicuous as possible while observing the Storer). The behavioral complex of food caching, with its emphasis of the role of the Starer and of the Pilferer, will be used to investigate the effects of social context on cognition in birds, combining the strengths of both ethnology and experimental psychology. Such cognitive abilities have been focused on primates, yet the discovery of such abilities in birds, with their smaller brains at absence of a cortex, would have major implications for the evolution of human intelligence.

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Participants

• University of Cambridge · CambridgeCoordinatorUnited Kingdom

Links

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