Eurasian jays do not copy the choices of conspecifics, but they do show evidence of stimulus enhancement.

ABSTRACT: Corvids (birds in the crow family) are hypothesised to have a general cognitive tool-kit because they show a wide range of transferrable skills across social, physical and temporal tasks, despite differences in socioecology. However, it is unknown whether relatively asocial corvids differ from social corvids in their use of social information in the context of copying the choices of others, because only one such test has been conducted in a relatively asocial corvid. We investigated whether relatively asocial Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) use social information (i.e., information made available by others). Previous studies have indicated that jays attend to social context in their caching and mate provisioning behaviour; however, it is unknown whether jays copy the choices of

SUBMITTER: Miller R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5136130 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature