Social cognition by food-caching corvids. The western scrub-jay as a natural psychologist

Food-caching corvids hide food, but such caches are susceptible to pilfering by other individuals. Consequently, the birds use several counter strategies to protect their caches from theft, e.g. hiding most of them out of sight. When observed by potential pilferers at the time of caching, experience...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2007-04, Vol.362 (1480), p.507-522
Main Authors: Clayton, Nicola S, Dally, Joanna M, Emery, Nathan J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Birds
Caching
Chimpanzees
Cognition
Cognition - physiology
Competitive Behavior - physiology
Crows
Experience Projection
Feeding Behavior - physiology
Food Caching Birds
Learning
Memory
Mental Attribution
Mind
Passeriformes - physiology
Primates
Social Behavior
Social cognition
Social Intelligence
Theory-Of-Mind
Western Scrub-Jay
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Food-caching corvids hide food, but such caches are susceptible to pilfering by other individuals. Consequently, the birds use several counter strategies to protect their caches from theft, e.g. hiding most of them out of sight. When observed by potential pilferers at the time of caching, experienced jays that have been thieves themselves, take further protective action. Once the potential pilferers have left, they move caches those birds have seen, re-hiding them in new places. Naive birds that had no thieving experience do not do so. By focusing on the counter strategies of the cacher when previously observed by a potential pilferer, these results raise the intriguing possibility that re-caching is based on a form of mental attribution, namely the simulation of another bird's viewpoint. Furthermore, the jays also keep track of the observer which was watching when they cached and take protective action accordingly, thus suggesting that they may also be aware of others' knowledge states.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2006.1992