Page 264 - Zoo Animal Learning and Training

236 Box B11 Learning and ognition in Birds

VetBooks.ir accuracy many months later. Experiments copied) is rare in non‐human animals (even
in apes), and whilst vocal imitation occurs in
suggest that visual cues surrounding the cach-
ing site are used to remember the locations
onstration of motor imitation in a bird, an
(Gould‐Beierle and Kamil 1996), and since several species, there has been only one dem-
retrieval performance in some species is bet- African grey parrot Psittacus erithacus
ter when retrieving items they have stored (Moore 1992).
themselves, it suggests that something about Theory of Mind (the ability to reason about
the personal experience of storing the food the mental states of another individual) has
item facilitates storage and recall of its loca- been argued as an important capability for
tion (Shettleworth 1990). These ‘episodic‐like’ individuals living in complex social groups.
memories have been probed in elegant experi- In animals lacking language, it is difficult to
ments using food‐storing Western scrub determine whether they are inferring mental
jays (Aphelocoma californica). These have states of other individuals, or simply respond-
exploited the fact that they prefer wax worms ing to their behaviour. However, experiments
to peanuts, but only when they are fresh and with scrub jays have suggested that personal
not decayed. Scrub jays were allowed to store experience of having pilfered another scrub
peanuts in one tray and wax worms in another, jay’s cache of food determined whether or
whilst manipulating the elapsed time between not an individual would choose to relocate
storing wax worms and the opportunity to their caches to a new tray, if another scrub jay
retrieve them. As predicted, scrub jays pre- had seen them cache the food and could thus
ferred the tray in which they had stored wax potentially steal their cache (Emery and
worms, but only if they had stored the worms Clayton 2001).
recently, so the worms were still fresh (Clayton
and Dickinson 1998). This suggests that the
jays remembered what they had stored, when Physical Cognition
they had stored it, and where (which tray) they
stored it in. Interacting with physical objects in the envi-
ronment is an important aspect of many
birds’ lives, from nest‐building (Healy et al.
Social Cognition 2008) to extractive foraging. Physical cogni-
tion may involve an understanding of the
Living in a complex social group can provide functional properties of objects, reasoning
opportunities to learn by observing others about causal relations, and predicting the
(Reader and Laland 2003). However, it also behaviour of objects. Much of the focus of
introduces the problem of maintaining rela- research in this area has been on tool‐using
tionships and keeping track of interactions, or tool‐making birds. In the wild, the list of
which has been argued as a cognitive con- species that habitually make tools is quite
straint on group size in primates (Dunbar short (New Caledonian crows Corvus
1992). Social learning can take a variety of moneduloides, and woodpecker finches
forms. In emulation, observers copy the out- Camarhynchus pallidus), but several non‐
come of another individual’s behaviour, tool using species have been shown to be
which contrasts with imitation, in which they capable of tool use in captivity, including
learn about and copy the actions of the dem- other corvids (e.g. rooks, Corvus frugilegus;
onstrator (Auersperg et al. 2014; Huber et al. Bird and Emery 2009) and parrots (Goffin’s
2001). These mechanisms can result in novel cockatoo, Cacatua goffini; Auersperg et al.
behaviours spreading rapidly through a local 2012, and kea, Nestor notabilis; Auersperg
population, as individuals learn from an et al. 2011). Tool use is thought to be poten-
innovator (Morand‐Ferron and Quinn 2011). tially cognitively demanding because it
True imitation (in which the action itself is requires the animal to control an object