1. Human Learning
Topic 12 - 1: Special Issues: Food Caching
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 1 3/30/2012

2. Comparative Cognition
 Very complex behavior
 Complex cognitive interpretations exist
 Must consider basic processes first
 Think parsimony

3. Food caching
 Storage of food
 Later recovery
 How do they remember?
 Clark’s nutcracker
 Stores 33,000 seeds, in thousands of caches
 Recovers them in the dead of winter

4. Food caching
 Only useful if you remember
 Only useful if you get the food
 Decrease caching in presence of observer

5. How does it work?
 Are they searching randomly?
 Are they storing food in ‘typical’ locations?
 No and No
 180 cups
 Some cups open
 Sand covered
 Rocks and things
 No smelling
 Raked sand

6. Episodic Memory?
 Remembering episodes
 Detailed recollection of an event
 What, when and where
 Possible explanation for caching/recovery
 Birds learned to cache different items
 Remembered where those items were
 Remembered what those items were
 Worms vs peanuts
 Remembered when those items were stored
 Ate the worms first