Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 362, Issue 1480, Pages 507-522Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1992
Keywords
experience projection; food caching birds; mental attribution; social intelligence; theory-of-mind; western scrub-jay
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Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/D000335/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/D000335/1] Funding Source: Medline
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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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