Testing two competing hypotheses for Eurasian jays’ caching for the future
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Abstract
Previous research reported that corvids preferentially cache food in a location where no food will be available or cache more of a specific food in a location where this food will not be available. Here, we consider possible explanations for these prospective caching behaviours and directly compare two competing hypotheses. The Compensatory Caching Hypothesis suggests that birds learn to cache more of a particular food in places where that food was less frequently available in the past. In contrast, the Future Planning Hypothesis suggests that birds recall the ‘what–when–where’ features of specific past events to predict the future availability of food. We designed a protocol in which the two hypotheses predict different caching patterns across different caching locations such that the two explanations can be disambiguated. We formalised the hypotheses in a Bayesian model comparison and tested this protocol in two experiments with one of the previously tested species, namely Eurasian jays. Consistently across the two experiments, the observed caching pattern did not support either hypothesis; rather it was best explained by a uniform distribution of caches over the different caching locations. Future research is needed to gain more insight into the cognitive mechanism underpinning corvids’ caching for the future.
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Both the caching and previous future planning paradigms have been criticized for not showing evidence of true foresight as seen in humans, or have failed to replicate.
“both this and the previous paradigm have been criticized for not showing evidence of true foresight as seen in humans [164,165], or have failed to replicate [166].”
From Is episodic-like memory <i>like</i> episodic memory? (2024) · cites this paper as [166]
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- Authors
- Amodio, P., Brea, J., Farrar, B. G., Ostojić, L., & Clayton, N. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
- University of Rijeka (HR)
- Corresponding author
- Amodio, Piero
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2021-01-12
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 835-835
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7804264
- OpenAlex
- W3119997424
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 1.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Funders
- Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 200020_165538 and 200020_184615)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M011194/1)
- European Research Council (FP7/2007-2012, Grant Agreement 3399933)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- Eurasian jay, food caching, corvid cognition, spatial memory, Bayesian model selection
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