Human LearningTopic 12 - 1: Special Issues: Food Caching

04/10/2023CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 1

Comparative Cognition

Very complex behavior

Complex cognitive interpretations exist

Must consider basic processes first

Think parsimony

Food caching

Storage of food

Later recovery

How do they remember?

Clark’s nutcracker

Stores 33,000 seeds, in thousands of caches

Recovers them in the dead of winter

Food caching

Only useful if you remember

Only useful if you get the food

Decrease caching in presence of observer

How does it work?

Are they searching randomly?

Are they storing food in ‘typical’ locations?

No and No

180 cups

Some cups open

Sand covered

Rocks and things

No smelling

Raked sand

Episodic Memory?

Remembering episodes

Detailed recollection of an event

What, when and where

Possible explanation for caching/recovery

Birds learned to cache different items

Remembered where those items were

Remembered what those items were

Worms vs peanuts

Remembered when those items were stored

Ate the worms first