Evidence Against Observational Learning in Storage and Recovery of Seeds by Black-Capped Chickadees

Abstract

Abstract Recovery of cached sunflower seeds by Black-capped Chickadees (Parus atricapillus) was observed in four laboratory experiments. Results of the first experiment were consistent with the hypothesis that chickadees use spatial memory to recover seeds cached 24 h earlier. The second experiment demonstrated that individuals have a high recovery rate for their own caches and a low recovery rate for caches made by another. The third and fourth experiments demonstrated that one chickadee observing another caching seeds provided no recovery benefit to the observer in comparison to its performance when recovering seeds hidden in its absence. This result held for 2-h and for 6-min delays between observation and attempted recovery. We believe that spatial memory is used by chickadees, that the individual carrying out the caching has a large recovery advantage over a conspecific that searches the same patch, and that the perceptual and motor experience involved in the act of traveling to a cache location may be necessary for the establishment of spatial memory.