Summary
In their natural environment, scrub jays harvest pinyon pine seeds and store them in subterranean caches. In our tests, the birds performed this behavior in an octagonal outdoor aviary with sand-filled cups inserted in the floor. For caching, only 12 such cups in a 90° sector were available, while for the recovery session 4 to 6 days later all 48 cups in the entire aviary were open. In control tests, the birds concentrated their search in the sector where the seeds had been cached. When the internal clock of the birds was shifted 6 h between caching and recovery, they preferentially probed in the adjacent 90° sector. This indicated that they used sun compass information to relocate their caches, largely ignoring visual cues from surrounding landmarks.
The dominant role of the sun compass which has a parallel in the orientation of homing pigeons, may reflect a general tendency to prefer compass information in spatial orientation tasks; it is in agreement with the model that birds generally have a directionally oriented view of space.
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Abbreviations
- OR :
-
Original caches
- SH :
-
‘shifted’ caches
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Wiltschko, W., Balda, R.P. Sun compass orientation in seed-caching scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens). J. Comp. Physiol. 164, 717–721 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00616744
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00616744