Timing in Free-Living Rufous Hummingbirds, Selasphorus rufus
Open accessAbstract
Animals organize their lives around circannual and circadian rhythms, but little is known of their use of much shorter intervals. In the laboratory, some animals can learn the specific duration (seconds or minutes) between periods of food access. It has been supposed that wild nectarivores, such as hummingbirds, might also learn short time intervals so as to avoid revisiting emptied flowers until the nectar has been replenished. We provided free-living, territorial rufous hummingbirds each with eight artificial flowers containing sucrose solution. Four flowers were refilled 10 min after the bird emptied them, and the other four were refilled 20 min after being emptied. Throughout the day, birds revisited the 10 min flowers significantly sooner than they revisited the 20 min flowers, and return visits to the flowers matched their refill schedules. Hummingbirds remembered the locations and timing of eight rewards, updating this information throughout the day. Not only is this the first time that this degree of timing ability has been shown in wild animals, but these hummingbirds also exhibit two of the fundamental aspects of episodic-like memory (where and when), the kind of memory for specific events often thought to be exclusive to humans.
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Other bird and mammal species have also been shown to possess episodic-like memory (what, where, when).
“Other bird and mammal species have also been shown to possess such type of memory”
From Keeping track of time: evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes (2010) · cites this paper as Henderson et al. 2006
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Henderson, J., Hurly, T. A., Bateson, M., & Healy, S. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- University of Lethbridge (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Healy, Susan D.
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2006-03
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 512-515
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2035096203
- Cited by
- 140
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 3.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 2695 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Avian ecology and behavior
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Keywords
- Rufous hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus, temporal memory, episodic-like memory, nectar foraging, artificial flowers, sucrose reward, spatial memory, nectarivores
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Birds, Feeding Behavior, Male, Memory, Periodicity, Time Perception
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