Looking at Britain’s overcrowded prisons, Wembley stadium or the continual dithering over solid climate change policies, it would seem that many of us are really quite bad at planning for the future. Even so, most of us can still do it (even though some may do it very badly). This abilty isn’t there from birth; children only develop a sense of a future at the age of two and they can only plan for it from four or five. But eventually, everyone picks up the skill and up till recently, scientists believed that we were the only species that did.
Many animals show behaviour that could be generously explained by future planning. Birds will often migrate to warmer climates, and bears will hibernate in advance of winter famines. But the world of modern biology resists casual anthropomorphism at all costs. Both animals and the scientists who study them) must work harder to prove themselves. Migrating birds or hibernating bears are not necessarily thinking ahead; they are most likely reacting to signals in the present that tell them the seasons are about to change. Their responses are instinctive.
To show true planning, an animal must do more than follow pre-programmed drives; they must anticipate their future desires and show new planned behaviours in response. Caroline Raby and colleagues from the University of Cambridge showed that a simple bird-brain – the beautiful Western scrub jay (Aphelocoma californica) – does just that. Jays store food in hiding places or ‘caches’ for times when food is scarce, and Raby’s studies suggest that this is more than an instinct that says: “Bury food when cold.”
She housed eight jays in large cages with three adjacent rooms – two end ones that opened onto a middle section. Every evening, the birds were fed with powdered pine nuts – tasty, but useless for storing. They went without food overnight, and in the morning, they were transferred to one of the end rooms for two hours. One of these, the ‘breakfast room’, always contained food while the other, the ‘non-breakfast’ room never did.
After three mornings spent in each room, the jays were finally given whole pine nuts, which they could store in sand-filled trays in either of the end compartments. The resourceful jays anticipated their hunger the following morning and stored three times as many nuts in the ‘non-breakfast’ room as the ‘breakfast’ one.
Raby was still not convinced. She reasoned that the jays might favour the ‘non-breakfast’ room because they learned to associate it with hunger. They needed to pass a harder test. She repeated her previous experiment, with a small twist. This time, the jays were fed every morning, but with different food. They were given peanuts in one room and dog kibble in the other.
When the jays were given the chance to store their meals, they did so evenly, so that each room contained some of the food it normally lacked. They not only ensured that they would be well-fed in the morning, they gave themselves a varied meal too.
Earlier experiments with scrub jays showed that they have a powerful ability to recall past events, as well as anticipate those to come. Their memory helps them to remember what they stored, where and when they did it, and even whether other birds were watching. This allows them to uncover different types of food while they are fresh, and to return earlier to protect their hoards from voyeuristic thieves.
Human studies suggest that the same brain processes govern any sort of mental time travel – both in the future and the past. Now, Raby’s work shows that jays share this ability. While we will never be able to ask the jays what they are thinking, elegant experiments like these bring us a step closer to understanding the mental abilities of animals. And what we are finding is gradually eroding our intellectual arrogance. When it comes to advanced thought, it seems that we are not alone.
Reference: C. R. Raby, D. M. Alexis, A. Dickinson, N. S. Clayton (2007). Planning for the future by western scrub-jays Nature, 445 (7130), 919-921 DOI: 10.1038/nature05575
October 16th, 2008 at 11:26 am
This means you’re back from Australia? Or they simply have computers there too?
October 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Rhea – They have computers, but they’re out back….
Hey, Ed, if jays are this good at planning, maybe the Discovery Institute ought to hire some?
October 16th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
What’s that famous New Yorker cartoon: with a dog behind a computer saying “nobody knows your a dog on the internet.” Anyhow, the blogging corollary is something along the lines … “nobody knows where you are when you are blogging” … or something like that. You truly can be anywhere. Your office is wherever you go.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
okay, I had a chance to read this offline and I have a real comment now!
I’ve heard that squirrels, who also bury food, have no idea where they’ve buried anything; they simply sniff around until they find something which is buried, dig it up and eat it.
What they find may be something they stored, or it could just as easily be something some other squirrel stored, or even something which was buried accidentally.
Is there anything to indicate that the jays remember where they stored the food, or are they in the same position the squirrels are in?
October 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Ian:
Scrub jays definitely remember where food they hid is stored. They will very accurately go to the right places without spending a ton of time in the wrong places. And they will watch other birds hiding food, then go raid that location later.
Not only that, they seem to remember which type of food is buried where and behave differently if a fair amount of time has passed since a dissolveable/temporary food (akin to a worm) was buried as opposed to a longer lasting food (like a nut). So they seem to have an idea of WHAT they buried, WHERE they buried it, and WHEN they buried it.
The big question is not whether this is all just accidental re-finding, but whether they in fact remember particular instances of burying (personal episodic memories, like we humans have), or whether they simply have at hand all the necessary knowledge (what-where-when), a sort of semantic memory of facts.
This latter distinction is much harder to prove. So scrub jays have been shown to have episodic-like memory, but not full episodic memory like humans (so far — may just be due to lack of properly elegant tests). Also, it goes beyond jays: other animals, including rats in the lab of a friend of mine, have demonstrated episodic-like memory.
The evidence for planning *per se* in animals is pretty cool too. Some primate studies have shown pretty impressive results in the last few years.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Jays plan for the future? In hindsight, we should have replaced the Bush administration with them.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Although Raby’s study shows that these jays do have episodic like memories and are able to plan and anticipate future needs, it has also been found that young scrub jays have a predisposition to cache food and other inedible objects such as stones, how does this study indicate that the cohort of these 8 jays are not just displaying a natural predisposition to cache?
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:51 pm
[...] Western Scrub Jays have demonstrated episodic memory (that is, memory of specific past events ) and the ability to plan for future contingencies based on past experience and observation. (Via Ed Yong.) [...]
April 23rd, 2011 at 5:50 pm
“how does this study indicate that the cohort of these 8 jays are not just displaying a natural predisposition to cache?”
I’ll take this one! Based on the info presented in the story, they deliberately mixed up the type of foods they were storing, so that they would have variety and a balance in the morning. So, it wasn’t just any object being cached, but particular objects.
Plus, in the original version of the experiment, they more likely cached the food when they had been confined to non-breakfast room, indicating that circumstances mattered!
Pretty savvy, if you ask me! (OK, you didn’t, but they are!)