Journal articles: 'Food caching'

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Krause, Douglas J., and Tracey L. Rogers. "Food caching by a marine apex predator, the leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx)." Canadian Journal of Zoology 97, no. 6 (2019): 573–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2018-0203.

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The foraging behaviors of apex predators can fundamentally alter ecosystems through cascading predator–prey interactions. Food caching is a widely studied, taxonomically diverse behavior that can modify competitive relationships and affect population viability. We address predictions that food caching would not be observed in the marine environment by summarizing recent caching reports from two marine mammal and one marine reptile species. We also provide multiple caching observations from disparate locations for a fourth marine predator, the leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx (de Blainville, 1820)). Drawing from consistent patterns in the terrestrial literature, we suggest the unusual diversity of caching strategies observed in leopard seals is due to high variability in their polar marine habitat. We hypothesize that caching is present across the spectrum of leopard seal social dominance; however, prevalence is likely to increase in smaller, less-dominant animals that hoard to gain competitive advantage. Given the importance of this behavior, we draw attention to the high probability of observing food caching behavior in other marine species.

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Kelley, Laura A., and Nicola S. Clayton. "California scrub-jays reduce visual cues available to potential pilferers by matching food colour to caching substrate." Biology Letters 13, no. 7 (2017): 20170242. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0242.

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Some animals hide food to consume later; however, these caches are susceptible to theft by conspecifics and heterospecifics. Caching animals can use protective strategies to minimize sensory cues available to potential pilferers, such as caching in shaded areas and in quiet substrate. Background matching (where object patterning matches the visual background) is commonly seen in prey animals to reduce conspicuousness, and caching animals may also use this tactic to hide caches, for example, by hiding coloured food in a similar coloured substrate. We tested whether California scrub-jays ( Aphelocoma californica ) camouflage their food in this way by offering them caching substrates that either matched or did not match the colour of food available for caching. We also determined whether this caching behaviour was sensitive to social context by allowing the birds to cache when a conspecific potential pilferer could be both heard and seen (acoustic and visual cues present), or unseen (acoustic cues only). When caching events could be both heard and seen by a potential pilferer, birds cached randomly in matching and non-matching substrates. However, they preferentially hid food in the substrate that matched the food colour when only acoustic cues were present. This is a novel cache protection strategy that also appears to be sensitive to social context. We conclude that studies of cache protection strategies should consider the perceptual capabilities of the cacher and potential pilferers.

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Hurly, T. Andrew, and Raleigh J. Robertson. "Scatterhoarding by territorial red squirrels: a test of the optimal density model." Canadian Journal of Zoology 65, no. 5 (1987): 1247–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/z87-194.

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We observed a high degree of scatterhoarding in a population of red squirrels and tested two predictions of the Optimal Density Model (ODM): (1) large food items will be cached at a greater distance from their source than small items; and (2) caches will be uniformly distributed about their source. Caching experiments supported prediction 1. Red squirrels carried large food items farther than small items before caching them. Prediction 2 was not supported; caches were distributed nonuniformly about their source both within and among caching bouts. We present a simple null model for scatterhoarding, which demonstrates that prediction 1 is not exclusive to the Optimal Density Model. Analyses of our cone-caching data and published data suggested that "optimal densities" were not the primary goal of the caching animal, but rather the result of a positive relationship between food value and investment in caching (carrying distance).

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Moldowan, Patrick D., and Hugo Kitching. "Observation of an Eastern Wolf (Canis sp. cf. lycaon) Caching Food in a Sphagnum Bog in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario." Canadian Field-Naturalist 130, no. 4 (2017): 351. http://dx.doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v130i4.1930.

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We report summer caching of a partial carcass of a White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn by an Eastern Wolf (Canis sp. cf. lycaon) in a Sphagnum bog in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. The microhabitat conditions in bogs (i.e., low temperature, acidity, and organochemical compounds) likely inhibit food spoilage, making bogs potentially important sites for food caching. Wolves in Algonquin Park experience low summer food availability and high pup mortality from starvation. Caches likely serve as necessary reserve food stores for adults and pups. Recent research has shown that wetland habitats are important den and rendezvous sites for Algonquin Eastern Wolves based on prey availability and, we suggest, perhaps for food storage and accessibility. This caching behaviour was recorded on video. We recommend that future research investigate Eastern Wolf selection of food-caching sites, as a complement to other spatial ecology studies.

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Morgan, Christopher. "Modeling Modes of Hunter-Gatherer Food Storage." American Antiquity 77, no. 4 (2012): 714–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.77.4.714.

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AbstractAnalyses of the capacity and rates of different acorn storage techniques employed by the Western Mono of California’s Sierra Nevada during the very late Holacene indicate hunter-gatherers store food in at least three main modes: central-place storage, dispersed caching, and dispersed bulk caching. The advantage of caching modes over central-place ones is that they entail faster storage rates and thus the chance to maximize storage capacity when seasonality and scheduling conflicts limit storing opportunities. They also result in predictable stores of acorn separate from winter population aggregations but oftentimes near seasonally occupied camps. Central-place storage thus appears most directly related to coping with single-year seasonal variability in environmental productivity and sedentary overwintering strategies; caching, and especially bulk caching, with multi-year environmental unpredictability, overwintering and seasonal residential moves. Storage thus appears to generally develop as a response to seasonality and unpredictable environmental productivity, but its various forms are conditioned mainly by how they articulate with different mobility types. Complex Mono storage behaviors, however, were associated with regionally low population densities and relatively uncomplicated social structures nonetheless characterized by chiefs who maintained their positions by throwing feasts of stored acorn. The connections between storage, population density, and sociocultural complexity thus appear less direct and predicated on specific sociopolitical circumstance. Recognizing different modes of hunter-gatherer storage is consequently critical to assessing the roles ecology, mobility, group size, and social distinctions play in the development of disparate storage behaviors.

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Waite, Thomas A., and John D. Reeve. "Caching Behaviour in the Gray Jay and the Source-Departure Decision for Rate-Maximizing Scatterhoarders." Behaviour 120, no. 1-2 (1992): 51–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853992x00200.

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AbstractWe developed a model that concerns, in part, how long a scatterhoarder should persist in caching food from an ephemeral, locally abundant source ('bonanza') before moving on in search of other sources. The model assumes that an animal scattering food caches for later use behaves in a manner that maximizes the rate at which it stores recoverable (surviving) food in its habitat. It is shown theoretically that under some conditions it is better not to cache all available food but instead to move on in search of other food sources. This 'source-departure decision' for scatterhoarders is analogous to the patch-departure decision for animals that forage among food patches. It is shown that whether, and at what point, a 'moving-on threshold' is reached should depend on the size of the source, the strength of density-dependent cache theft, and the abundance of sources in the habitat. A field experiment was performed to test the qualitative prediction that gray jays, Perisoreus canadensis, should not persist as long in caching food when a day-long opportunity for caching is restricted to a single source (single-source treatment) as when such an opportunity is divided among a series of disjunct sources (multiple-source treatment). In the single-source treatment, jays tended to cache at lower overall rates, transport food items to more distant cache sites, and spend less time caching. These tendencies became more pronounced later in the day. However, although the rate of caching approached zero in the single-source treatment, the jays did not completely cease caching. This apparent violation of the model is attributed to the behaviour of recaching, a facet of gray jay scatterhoarding behaviour that was not built into the model. This retrieval and redistribution of previous caches resulted in the stabilization of the density of caches near the source. In addition, this switch from single- to multiple-load caching trips arguably would make it economical for gray jays to continue to make caching trips from a source beyond the source-departure point predicted by the model. Our theoretical and empirical results begin to show how scatterhoarders may behave in a manner that maximizes the long-term average rate of storage of recoverable food energy throughout their habitat.

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Alpern, Steve, Robbert Fokkink, Thomas Lidbetter, and Nicola S. Clayton. "A search game model of the scatter hoarder's problem." Journal of The Royal Society Interface 9, no. 70 (2011): 869–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2011.0581.

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Scatter hoarders are animals (e.g. squirrels) who cache food (nuts) over a number of sites for later collection. A certain minimum amount of food must be recovered, possibly after pilfering by another animal, in order to survive the winter. An optimal caching strategy is one that maximizes the survival probability, given worst case behaviour of the pilferer. We modify certain ‘accumulation games’ studied by Kikuta & Ruckle (2000 J. Optim. Theory Appl. ) and Kikuta & Ruckle (2001 Naval Res. Logist. ), which modelled the problem of optimal diversification of resources against catastrophic loss, to include the depth at which the food is hidden at each caching site. Optimal caching strategies can then be determined as equilibria in a new ‘caching game’. We show how the distribution of food over sites and the site-depths of the optimal caching varies with the animal's survival requirements and the amount of pilfering. We show that in some cases, ‘decoy nuts’ are required to be placed above other nuts that are buried further down at the same site. Methods from the field of search games are used. Some empirically observed behaviour can be shown to be optimal in our model.

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Clayton, N. S., D. P. Griffiths, N. J. Emery, and A. Dickinson. "Elements of episodic–like memory in animals." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 356, no. 1413 (2001): 1483–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2001.0947.

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A number of psychologists have suggested that episodic memory is a uniquely human phenomenon and, until recently, there was little evidence that animals could recall a unique past experience and respond appropriately. Experiments on food–caching memory in scrub jays question this assumption. On the basis of a single caching episode, scrub jays can remember when and where they cached a variety of foods that differ in the rate at which they degrade, in a way that is inexplicable by relative familiarity. They can update their memory of the contents of a cache depending on whether or not they have emptied the cache site, and can also remember where another bird has hidden caches, suggesting that they encode rich representations of the caching event. They make temporal generalizations about when perishable items should degrade and also remember the relative time since caching when the same food is cached in distinct sites at different times. These results show that jays form integrated memories for the location, content and time of caching. This memory capability fulfils Tulving's behavioural criteria for episodic memory and is thus termed ‘episodic–like’. We suggest that several features of episodic memory may not be unique to humans.

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Grodzinski, Uri, and Nicola S. Clayton. "Problems faced by food-caching corvids and the evolution of cognitive solutions." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365, no. 1542 (2010): 977–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0210.

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The scatter hoarding of food, or caching, is a widespread and well-studied behaviour. Recent experiments with caching corvids have provided evidence for episodic-like memory, future planning and possibly mental attribution, all cognitive abilities that were thought to be unique to humans. In addition to the complexity of making flexible, informed decisions about caching and recovering, this behaviour is underpinned by a motivationally controlled compulsion to cache. In this review, we shall first discuss the compulsive side of caching both during ontogeny and in the caching behaviour of adult corvids. We then consider some of the problems that these birds face and review the evidence for the cognitive abilities they use to solve them. Thus, the emergence of episodic-like memory is viewed as a solution for coping with food perishability, while the various cache-protection and pilfering strategies may be sophisticated tools to deprive competitors of information, either by reducing the quality of information they can gather, or invalidating the information they already have. Finally, we shall examine whether such future-oriented behaviour involves future planning and ask why this and other cognitive abilities might have evolved in corvids.

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Logan, Corina J., Brigit D. Harvey, Barney A. Schlinger, and Michelle Rensel. "Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop’s Fable experiments." PeerJ 4 (February 23, 2016): e1707. http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1707.

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Western scrub-jays are known for their highly discriminatory and flexible behaviors in a caching (food storing) context. However, it is unknown whether their cognitive abilities are restricted to a caching context. To explore this question, we tested scrub-jays in a non-caching context using the Aesop’s Fable paradigm, where a partially filled tube of water contains a floating food reward and objects must be inserted to displace the water and bring the food within reach. We tested four birds, but only two learned to drop stones proficiently. Of these, one bird participated in 4/5 experiments and one in 2/5 experiments. Both birds passed one experiment, but without attending to the functional differences of the objects, and failed the other experiments. Scrub-jays were not motivated to participate in these experiments, suggesting that either this paradigm was ecologically irrelevant or perhaps their flexibility is restricted to a caching context.

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Stanback, Mark T. "A Reassessment of Avian Food Caching." Bird Behavior 9, no. 1 (1990): 1–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.3727/015613890791749046.

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Lanszki, József, Attila Mórocz, and Jim W. H. Conroy. "Food caching by a Eurasian otter." Folia Zoologica 60, no. 1 (2011): 43–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.25225/fozo.v60.i1.a7.2011.

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Way, Jonathan G., and Rebecca D. Cabral. "Effects of Hierarchy Rank on Caching Frequency in a Captive Coywolf (Eastern Coyote) Canis latrans × lycaon, Pack." Canadian Field-Naturalist 123, no. 2 (2009): 173. http://dx.doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v123i2.699.

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Caching is useful because it ensures a consistent supply of food for animals. However, there is a relative paucity of data concerning which members of canid social units make the most caches. We provide data indicating that dominant members of a captive Coywolf “Eastern Coyote”, (Canis latrans × lycaon) pack did the majority (78%, n = 46 of 59) of caching. Caching is a common activity stereotypically performed by canids, and dominant members of a social unit tend to cache more often.

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LaDage, Lara D., Timothy C. Roth, Rebecca A. Fox, and Vladimir V. Pravosudov. "Flexible cue use in food-caching birds." Animal Cognition 12, no. 3 (2008): 419–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0201-0.

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Waite, R. K. "Food caching and recovery by farmland corvids." Bird Study 32, no. 1 (1985): 45–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00063658509476854.

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KIM, S. L., K. CONLAN, D. P. MALONE, and C. V. LEWIS. "Possible food caching and defence in the Weddell seal: observations from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica." Antarctic Science 17, no. 1 (2005): 71–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954102005002452.

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On the basis of observations of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii Lesson) made in the course of studying shallow-water benthic communities in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, we suggest that caching and/or defence of uneaten food may be a strategy practiced by this animal. Such a phenomenon is uncommon but taxonomically widespread among vertebrates. Depending on circumstances, it is termed hoarding, caching, or storage and may be short- or long-term, include defence of the resource, or have other variable expressions, with the common threads being deferred consumption and deterrence of consumption by others (Vanderwall 1990). Many vertebrate taxa exhibit hoarding behaviour, including rodents (e.g. Sciuridae), carnivores (e.g. Canidae, Felinidae) and birds (e.g. Corvidae, Picidae). No form of food caching, to our knowledge, has ever been reported in a wild pinniped.

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Swift, K. N., E. J. Williams, and J. M. Marzluff. "An observational analysis of Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis) foraging and caching ecology in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, USA." Canadian Journal of Zoology 100, no. 2 (2022): 133–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2021-0053.

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Arctic and subarctic wildlife are among the most vulnerable species to climate change. Canada Jays (Perisoreus canadensis (Linnaeus, 1776)) are generalist residents of northern boreal forests and scatter-hoard food to insulate against food scarcity during winter. Unlike most scatter-hoarders, however, Canada Jays primarily cache perishable food, rendering their caches more susceptible to climate change induced degradation and loss. Here we use a mostly noninvasive approach to document Canada Jay foraging ecology among a population in interior Alaska, USA, including the types of food acquired, foraging and caching rates, and cache longevity and loss. We also tested for associations between foraging and caching rates with reproductive metrics to assess possible relationships among food and productivity. We found that Canada Jays have a varied diet that changed seasonally, and responded to a record-setting warm spring by directing foraging efforts away from cache recovery and towards the emergence of fresh food. We did not find evidence for relationships between foraging and caching rate with reproductive output, possibly owing to small sample sizes. We found that caches were recovered quickly (<4 weeks) and frequently lost to conspecific and heterospecific competitors. Our study suggests that Canada Jays may be better poised to respond to changes in cache integrity and food availability than has been previously recognized.

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Roth, Timothy C., Niels C. Rattenborg, and Vladimir V. Pravosudov. "The ecological relevance of sleep: the trade-off between sleep, memory and energy conservation." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365, no. 1542 (2010): 945–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0209.

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All animals in which sleep has been studied express signs of sleep-like behaviour, suggesting that sleep must have some fundamental functions that are sustained by natural selection. Those functions, however, are still not clear. Here, we examine the ecological relevance of sleep from the perspective of behavioural trade-offs that might affect fitness. Specifically, we highlight the advantage of using food-caching animals as a system in which a conflict might occur between engaging in sleep for memory/learning and hypothermia/torpor to conserve energy. We briefly review the evidence for the importance of sleep for memory, the importance of memory for food-caching animals and the conflicts that might occur between sleep and energy conservation in these animals. We suggest that the food-caching paradigm represents a naturalistic and experimentally practical system that provides the opportunity for a new direction in sleep research that will expand our understanding of sleep, especially within the context of ecological and evolutionary processes.

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van der Merwe, Marius, Joel S. Brown, and Burt P. Kotler. "Quantifying the future value of cacheable food using fox squirrels (sciurus niger)." Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 60, no. 1 (2014): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15659801.2014.907974.

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Food caching allows foraging decisions to include both present and future food value. We developed and tested a conceptual framework for measuring animals’ perceptions of future vs. present food value. Fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) are well-known caching animals in North America. We measured giving-up densities (GUDs) of fox squirrels to test the following hypotheses: (1) all else equal, animals should prefer cacheable to non-cacheable foods, and (2) the option value of a cacheable food should change seasonally and be highest preceding lean periods. We presented squirrels with experimental food patches containing either shelled hazelnuts, hazelnuts with their shells intact (to affect cacheability) or both kinds. Our data support both hypotheses. Squirrels exploited food patches with cacheable nuts more thoroughly and left them at lower GUDs. The squirrels’ perception of the future value of hazelnuts with their shells intact was found to be 32% higher than their present value. GUDs also varied by season, fall > spring >winter > summer, likely corresponding to food availability. Season and food cacheability interacted to further determine GUDs. The difference in GUDs between cacheable and non-cacheable nuts varied similarly: fall > spring > winter > summer, likely corresponding to changing food availability, reproductive opportunities and pending energetic shortfalls.

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Krupiński, Dominik, and Jerzy Lewtak. "Caching Eurasian skylarks Alauda arvensis by the Montagu's harrier Circus pygargus." Slovak Raptor Journal 4, no. 1 (2010): 41–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10262-012-0043-1.

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Caching Eurasian skylarksAlauda arvensisby the Montagu's harrierCircus pygargusWe observed caching Eurasian skylarks by a radio-tracked male Montagu's harrier in eastern Poland. This strategy, in combination with the courtship feeding of the female, was an important element of courtship. Frequent food transfers to the female could reflect a good condition of the male and its good hunting abilities.

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Yang, Hunster. "A Review of the Association Between Environmental Harshness, Neurogenesis and Caching Behaviour." STEM Fellowship Journal 5, no. 1 (2019): 13–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.17975/sfj-2019-005.

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Memory is one of the most crucial cognitive functions in many organisms. It is highly implicated in everyday functioning and is an essential component for survival. Past research has revealed that spatial memory facilitates bird caching behaviours such as remembering the exact locations of their hidden food. However, there are many factors that alter the demands on memory and consequently impact the function of caching. Specifically, neurogenesis, the process of forming new neurons, has been shown to affect this behaviour. Likewise, environmental variables and selective pressures (i.e., severity of the environment) can also influence caching in birds. In this review, we present evidence for a link between environmental harshness, hippocampal neurogenesis, and caching behaviour in chickadees, with specific focus on work by Chancellor et al. [6]. Neurogenesis in chickadees may be a mechanism subject to selective pressures, in which chickadees from harsher environments have increased neurogenesis rates and consequently enhanced caching ability. However, there remain gaps in the understanding of how exactly hippocampal neurogenesis, environmental harshness, and caching behaviour interact, and future studies are needed to further explore this interaction and its implications.

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Källander, Hans. "Food caching in the European Nuthatch Sitta europaea." Ornis Svecica 3, no. 2 (1993): 49–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.34080/os.v3.23043.

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The behaviour and cache sites of European Nuthatches storing naturally occurring beech Fagus sylvatica and hazel Corylus avellana nuts in a South Swedish wood are described. Data are also given on the retrieval of cached nuts in winter and on recaching. On average it took a Nuthatch about 1 min to cache a beech nut. A third of all caches were below 1 m, 20% in the ground. Of those in trees, most were at heights between 5 and 15 m and less than 20% on branches thinner than 4 cm; of caches made above ground, 43% were in dead, often rotten wood. The choice of cache site was related to the kind of item to be cached: a higher proportion of hazel than beech nuts was cached in the ground. Oak was used proportionally more, and other species of tree proportionally less for caching than suggested by their abundance, perhaps because oak presented much dead wood which was extensively used for caching. More than 80% of all caches were covered with material from the immediate surroundings of the cache site. The Nuthatches removed the seed coat from a high proportion of the beech nuts before caching them; however, none of those cached in the ground and similar sites were shelled. During the coldest part of the winter, 1.1 nut per hour was retrieved in a winter following a poor mast crop vs 4.6 in a winter following a rich one. Recaching was common at all times but less so in winter.

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Shaw, Rachael C., and Nicola S. Clayton. "Careful cachers and prying pilferers: Eurasian jays ( Garrulus glandarius ) limit auditory information available to competitors." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, no. 1752 (2013): 20122238. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2238.

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Food-storing corvids use many cache-protection and pilfering strategies. We tested whether Eurasian jays ( Garrulus glandarius ) reduce the transfer of auditory information to a competitor when caching and pilfering. We gave jays a noisy and a quiet substrate to cache in. Compared with when alone, birds cached less in the noisy substrate when with a conspecific that could hear but could not see them caching. By contrast, jays did not change the amount cached in the noisy substrate when they were with a competitor that could see and hear them caching compared with when they were alone. Together, these results suggest that jays reduce auditory information during caching as a cache-protection strategy. By contrast, as pilferers, jays did not attempt to conceal their presence from a cacher and did not prefer a silent viewing perch over a noisy one when observing caching. However, birds vocalized less when watching caching compared with when they were alone, when they were watching a non-caching conspecific or when they were watching their own caches being pilfered. Pilfering jays may therefore attempt to suppress some types of auditory information. Our results raise the possibility that jays both understand and can attribute auditory perception to another individual.

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Clayton, Nicola S., Joanna M. Dally, and Nathan J. Emery. "Social cognition by food-caching corvids. The western scrub-jay as a natural psychologist." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362, no. 1480 (2007): 507–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1992.

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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.

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de Kort, Selvino R., Anthony Dickinson, and Nicola S. Clayton. "Retrospective cognition by food-caching western scrub-jays." Learning and Motivation 36, no. 2 (2005): 159–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2005.02.008.

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Champion de Crespigny, Fleur E., Marie E. Herberstein, and Mark A. Elgar. "Food caching in orb-web spiders (Araneae: Araneoidea)." Naturwissenschaften 88, no. 1 (2001): 42–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s001140000194.

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Kilham, Lawrence. "Common Raven, Corax corax, caching food in snow." Canadian field-naturalist 102, no. 1 (1988): 68. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/p.356505.

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Welklin, Joseph F., Benjamin R. Sonnenberg, Carrie L. Branch, et al. "Spatial cognitive ability is associated with longevity in food-caching chickadees." Science 385, no. 6713 (2024): 1111–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adn5633.

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Cognitive abilities are hypothesized to affect survival and life span in nonhuman animals. However, most tests of this hypothesis have relied on interspecific comparisons of indirect measures of cognitive ability, such as brain size. We present direct evidence that individual variation in cognitive abilities is associated with differences in life span in a wild food caching bird. We measured the spatial cognitive abilities and tracked the life span of 227 mountain chickadees ( Poecile gambeli ) in their natural environment and found that individuals with better spatial learning and memory abilities involved in food caching lived longer. These results confirm that enhanced cognitive abilities can be associated with longer life in wild animals and that selection on cognitive abilities can lead to increased life span.

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Payne, H. L., G. F. Lynch, and D. Aronov. "Neural representations of space in the hippocampus of a food-caching bird." Science 373, no. 6552 (2021): 343–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abg2009.

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Spatial memory in vertebrates requires brain regions homologous to the mammalian hippocampus. Between vertebrate clades, however, these regions are anatomically distinct and appear to produce different spatial patterns of neural activity. We asked whether hippocampal activity is fundamentally different even between distant vertebrates that share a strong dependence on spatial memory. We studied tufted titmice, food-caching birds capable of remembering many concealed food locations. We found mammalian-like neural activity in the titmouse hippocampus, including sharp-wave ripples and anatomically organized place cells. In a non–food-caching bird species, spatial firing was less informative and was exhibited by fewer neurons. These findings suggest that hippocampal circuit mechanisms are similar between birds and mammals, but that the resulting patterns of activity may vary quantitatively with species-specific ethological needs.

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Roth, Timothy C., Lara D. LaDage, and Vladimir V. Pravosudov. "Variation in hippocampal morphology along an environmental gradient: controlling for the effects of day length." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278, no. 1718 (2011): 2662–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2585.

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Environmental conditions may create increased demands for memory, which in turn may affect specific brain regions responsible for memory function. This may occur either via phenotypic plasticity or selection for individuals with enhanced cognitive abilities. For food-caching animals, in particular, spatial memory appears to be important because it may have a direct effect on fitness via their ability to accurately retrieve food caches. Our previous studies have shown that caching animals living in more harsh environments (characterized by low temperatures, high snow cover and short day lengths) possess more neurons within a larger hippocampus (Hp), a part of the brain involved in spatial memory. However, the relative role of each of these environmental features in the relationship is unknown. Here, we dissociate the effects of one theoretically important factor (day length) within the environmental severity/Hp relationship by examining food-caching birds (black-capped chickadee, Poecile atricapillus ) selected at locations along the same latitude, but with very different climatic regimes. There was a significant difference in Hp attributes among populations along the same latitude with very different climatic features. Birds from the climatically mild location had significantly smaller Hp volumes and fewer Hp neurons than birds from the more harsh populations, even though all populations experienced similar day lengths. These results suggest that variables such as temperature and snow cover seem to be important even without the compounding effect of reduced day length at higher latitudes and suggest that low temperature and snow cover alone may be sufficient to generate high demands for memory and the hippocampus. Our data further confirmed that the association between harsh environment and the hippocampus in food-caching animals is robust across a large geographical area and across years.

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Kozlovsky, Dovid Y., Emily A. Weissgerber, and Vladimir V. Pravosudov. "What makes specialized food-caching mountain chickadees successful city slickers?" Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no. 1855 (2017): 20162613. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.2613.

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Anthropogenic environments are a dominant feature of the modern world; therefore, understanding which traits allow animals to succeed in these urban environments is especially important. Overall, generalist species are thought to be most successful in urban environments, with better general cognition and less neophobia as suggested critical traits. It is less clear, however, which traits would be favoured in urban environments in highly specialized species. Here, we compared highly specialized food-caching mountain chickadees living in an urban environment (Reno, NV, USA) with those living in their natural environment to investigate what makes this species successful in the city. Using a ‘common garden’ paradigm, we found that urban mountain chickadees tended to explore a novel environment faster and moved more frequently, were better at novel problem-solving, had better long-term spatial memory retention and had a larger telencephalon volume compared with forest chickadees. There were no significant differences between urban and forest chickadees in neophobia, food-caching rates, spatial memory acquisition, hippocampus volume, or the total number of hippocampal neurons. Our results partially support the idea that some traits associated with behavioural flexibility and innovation are associated with successful establishment in urban environments, but differences in long-term spatial memory retention suggest that even this trait specialized for food-caching may be advantageous. Our results highlight the importance of environmental context, species biology, and temporal aspects of invasion in understanding how urban environments are associated with behavioural and cognitive phenotypes and suggest that there is likely no one suite of traits that makes urban animals successful.

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Pravosudov, V. V. "A dynamic model of short-term energy management in small food-caching and non-caching birds." Behavioral Ecology 12, no. 2 (2001): 207–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/12.2.207.

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Bugnyar, Thomas, and Bernd Heinrich. "Ravens, Corvus corax , differentiate between knowledgeable and ignorant competitors." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 272, no. 1573 (2005): 1641–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3144.

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Human social behaviour is influenced by attributing mental states to others. It is debated whether and to what extent such skills might occur in non-human animals. We here test for the possibility of ravens attributing knowledge about the location of food to potential competitors. In our experiments, we capitalize on the mutually antagonistic interactions that occur in these birds between those individuals that store food versus those that try to pilfer these caches. Since ravens' pilfer success depends on memory of observed caches, we manipulated the view of birds at caching, thereby designing competitors who were either knowledgeable or ignorant of cache location and then tested the responses of both storers and pilferers to those competitors at recovery. We show that ravens modify their cache protection and pilfer tactics not simply in response to the immediate behaviour of competitors, but also in relation to whether or not they previously had the opportunity of observing caching. Our results suggest that the birds not only recall whom they had seen during caching, but also know that obstacles can obstruct the view of others and that this affects pilfering.

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Hendricks, Paul. "BLACK-BILLED MAGPIES (PICA HUDSONIA) CACHING FOOD IN SNOW." Northwestern Naturalist 101, no. 2 (2020): 125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1898/1051-1733-101.2.125.

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Mueller, Helmut C. "Food Caching Behaviour in the American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)." Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 34, no. 2 (2010): 105–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1974.tb01792.x.

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Macdonald, David W. "Food Caching by Red Foxes and Some Other Carnivores." Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 42, no. 2 (2010): 170–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1976.tb00963.x.

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Daly, Martin, and Lisa Leaver. "Effects of Food Preference on Scatter-Hoarding by Kangaroo Rats (Dipodomys Merriami)." Behaviour 135, no. 6 (1998): 823–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853998792640468.

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AbstractTwo laboratory studies were conducted to determine whether Merriam's kangaroo rats invest greater effort in the caching of a more preferred food. As predicted, more of the preferred food was cached and yet the individual caches were smaller. The second experiment showed wider dispersion of the preferred food, and these caches were placed further away from the source. These findings imply that investment in protecting food from pilferage is adjusted in relation to the animal's evaluation of that food.

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Brecht, Katharina F., Ljerka Ostojić, Edward W. Legg, and Nicola S. Clayton. "Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)." PeerJ 6 (March 14, 2018): e4451. http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4451.

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Previous research has suggested that videos can be used to experimentally manipulate social stimuli. In the present study, we used the California scrub-jays’ cache protection strategies to assess whether video playback can be used to simulate conspecifics in a social context. In both the lab and the field, scrub-jays are known to exhibit a range of behaviours to protect their caches from potential pilferage by a conspecific, for example by hiding food in locations out of the observer’s view or by re-caching previously made caches once the observer has left. Here, we presented scrub-jays with videos of a conspecific observer as well as two non-social conditions during a caching period and assessed whether they would cache out of the observer’s “view” (Experiment 1) or would re-cache their caches once the observer was no longer present (Experiment 2). In contrast to previous studies using live observers, the scrub-jays’ caching and re-caching behaviour was not influenced by whether the observer was present or absent. These findings suggest that there might be limitations in using video playback of social agents to mimic real-life situations when investigating corvid decision making.

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Hendricks, Paul, and Lisa M. Hendricks. "Common Ravens Using Trees For Caching Food Near the Nest." Northwestern Naturalist 98, no. 3 (2017): 237–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1898/nwn17-03.1.

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Pruett-Jones, M. A., and S. G. Pruett-Jones. "Food Caching in the Tropical Frugivore, Macgregor's Bowerbird (Amblyornis macgregoriae)." Auk 102, no. 2 (1985): 334–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4086776.

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Lima, Steven L., and Robert M. Lee. "Food Caching and Its Possible Origin in the Brown Creeper." Condor 95, no. 2 (1993): 483. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1369375.

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Rensel, Michelle A., Jesse M. S. Ellis, Brigit Harvey, and Barney A. Schlinger. "Sex, estradiol, and spatial memory in a food-caching corvid." Hormones and Behavior 75 (September 2015): 45–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.07.022.

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Montevecchi, W. A., and B. O. Sklepkovych. "Food-caching by foxes is a selfish strategy: A comment." Applied Animal Behaviour Science 14, no. 1 (1985): 99–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0168-1591(85)90041-3.

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Olech, Bogumiła, and Mikołaj Pruszyński. "Food Caching or Surplus Killing in the Common BuzzardButeo buteo?" Acta Ornithologica 35, no. 2 (2000): 215–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.3161/068.035.0204.

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Stulp, Gert, Nathan J. Emery, Simon Verhulst, and Nicola S. Clayton. "Western scrub-jays conceal auditory information when competitors can hear but cannot see." Biology Letters 5, no. 5 (2009): 583–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0330.

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Western scrub-jays ( Aphelocoma californica ) engage in a variety of cache-protection strategies to reduce the chances of cache theft by conspecifics. Many of these strategies revolve around reducing visual information to potential thieves. This study aimed to determine whether the jays also reduce auditory information during caching. Each jay was given the opportunity to cache food in two trays, one of which was filled with small pebbles that made considerable noise when cached in (‘noisy’ tray), whereas the other one contained soil that made little detectable noise when cached in (‘quiet’ tray). When the jays could be heard, but not seen, by a competitor, they cached proportionally less food items in the ‘noisy’ substrate than when they cached alone in the room, or when they could be seen and heard by competitors. These results suggest that western scrub-jays know when to conceal auditory information, namely when a competitor cannot see but can hear the caching event.

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Vetter, Sebastian G., Louise Rangheard, Lena Schaidl, Kurt Kotrschal, and Friederike Range. "Observational spatial memory in wolves and dogs." PLOS ONE 18, no. 9 (2023): e0290547. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290547.

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Social learning is highly adaptive in transmitting essential information between individuals in many species. While several mechanisms have been observed, less is known about how much animals can remember. However, results on observational spatial memory among caching species, i.e. a form of social learning allowing individuals to remember and pilfer food caches made by others, suggest that this ability correlates with their social organization. Both wolves and their domesticated form, dogs, are social species known to make food caches, and previous studies have shown that they both can use observational spatial memory abilities to find hidden food. In order to test how much socially transmitted information wolves and dogs can remember, we tested both species in a task requiring them to find 4, 6 or 8 caches after they observed a human hiding food items, or after a control condition where they could not observe the hiding. We found that both wolves and dogs retrieved more caches and were more efficient for the first few caches if they observed the hiding than in the control condition, suggesting that they did not simply rely on scent to find the rewards. Interestingly, wolves outperformed dogs irrespective of whether the caching could be observed or not. We suggest that this result is due to a difference in motivation/persistence between wolves and dogs rather than observational spatial memory.

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Stone, Eric R., and Myron Charles Baker. "The Effects of Conspecifics on Food Caching by Black-Capped Chickadees." Condor 91, no. 4 (1989): 886. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1368073.

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Lahti, Kimmo, Kari Koivula, Seppo Rytkönen, et al. "Social influences on food caching in willow tits: a field experiment." Behavioral Ecology 9, no. 2 (1998): 122–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/9.2.122.

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Gendron, Robert P., and O. J. Reichman. "Food Perishability and Inventory Management: A Comparison of Three Caching Strategies." American Naturalist 145, no. 6 (1995): 948–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/285778.

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Pravosudov, Vladimir V., Timothy C. Roth, and Lara D. LaDage. "Chickadees are selfish group members when it comes to food caching." Animal Behaviour 80, no. 2 (2010): 175–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.04.013.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Food caching'

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