Spatial Memory in Food-Storing Birds

In the wild, several species of birds among the parids (tits and chickadees) and corvids store food in scattered locations and find it again days or months later. The food storers that have been tested use memory to recovery their stores in the laboratory. The importance of memory to a food-storing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 1990-08, Vol.329 (1253), p.143-151
Main Author: Shettleworth, Sara J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal feeding behavior
Aviary birds
Birds
Experimentation
Food
Foraging
Marshes
Memory
Recovered memory
Waterfowl
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Summary:In the wild, several species of birds among the parids (tits and chickadees) and corvids store food in scattered locations and find it again days or months later. The food storers that have been tested use memory to recovery their stores in the laboratory. The importance of memory to a food-storing way of life suggests that these birds possess an adaptive specialization of some aspect or aspects of memory. Recent work has focused on analysing how memory is involved in recovering stored food, discovering how this memory can be tested in tasks that do not involve food storing, and comparing the memory of storing birds with that of their non-storing relatives in a variety of tasks.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.1990.0159