Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays

N. J. Emery and N. S. Clayton ()
Additional contact information
N. J. Emery: University of Cambridge
N. S. Clayton: University of Cambridge

Nature, 2001, vol. 414, issue 6862, 443-446

Abstract: Abstract Social life has costs associated with competition for resources such as food1. Food storing may reduce this competition as the food can be collected quickly and hidden elsewhere2,3,4; however, it is a risky strategy because caches can be pilfered by others5,6,7,8,9. Scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) remember ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ they cached10,11,12,13. Like other corvids6,7,8,9,14, they remember where conspecifics have cached, pilfering them when given the opportunity, but may also adjust their own caching strategies to minimize potential pilfering. To test this, jays were allowed to cache either in private (when the other bird's view was obscured) or while a conspecific was watching, and then recover their caches in private. Here we show that jays with prior experience of pilfering another bird's caches subsequently re-cached food in new cache sites during recovery trials, but only when they had been observed caching. Jays without pilfering experience did not, even though they had observed other jays caching. Our results suggest that jays relate information about their previous experience as a pilferer to the possibility of future stealing by another bird, and modify their caching strategy accordingly.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35106560 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:414:y:2001:i:6862:d:10.1038_35106560

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35106560

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().