ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2012) — In order to
prevent other birds from stealing the food they are storing for later, Eurasian
jays, a type of corvid, minimizes any auditory hints a potential pilferer may
use to steal their cache (food that is buried for later use). The new research
was published December 5, in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Corvids are prolific cachers (or hoarders),
burying food such as acorns in several thousand locations over the course of a
year. When food becomes scarce during winter and spring, they remember where
they buried their caches and retrieve the food items. However, pilfering of
caches is commonplace. As a result, they are often trying to minimize other birds
stealing their food and maximize the food that they steal.
In the first experiment, the researchers gave
the jays options to hide food in substrates which varied in the amount of noise
they made (a tray containing noisy gravel and a tray containing quiet sand).
The birds' preferences for using these different substrates were tested when
they were alone, when they had another bird that could see and hear them and
when there was another bird that could hear but could not see them.
No comments:
Post a Comment