Caching at a distance: a cache protection strategy in Eurasian jays.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental question about the complexity of corvid social cognition is whether behaviours exhibited when caching in front of potential pilferers represent specific attempts to prevent cache loss (cache protection hypothesis) or whether they are by-products of other behaviours (by-product hypothesis). Here, we demonstrate that Eurasian jays preferentially cache at a distance when observed by conspecifics. This preference for a 'far' location could be either a by-product of a general preference for caching at that specific location regardless of the risk of cache loss or a by-product of a general preference to be far away from conspecifics due to low intra-species tolerance. Critically, we found that neither by-product account explains the jays' behaviour: the preference for the 'far' loc

SUBMITTER: Legg EW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4891366 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature