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The use of landmarks by food-storing corvids
Abstract
The idea that some animals use visual cues, or landmarks, to orient through space has been studied for almost 60 years. It is in recent years that this question has become more focused and has began to address how animals are able to use spatial information from landmarks. In the following chapters, research investigating how food-storing birds in the corvid family use certain properties of landmarks when searching for hidden food in the laboratory is presented. The importance of local versus global cues for Clark's nutcrackers was investigated in Chapter 2. Species differences in landmark-use among Clark's nutcrackers, pinyon jays, and scrub jays are examined in Chapter 3 using the same experimental design as in Chapter 2. Finally, the effect of the proximity of landmarks for Clark's nutcrackers is investigated in Chapter 4. Three major conclusions can be drawn from these studies. First, global cues are important sources of information for Clark's nutcrackers. The birds may be using these cues in conjunction with local cues or in a hierarchical fashion. Second, the proximity of local landmarks to a goal location is important in how both local and global information is used. It appears that when local landmarks are closer to the goal during training they overshadow the potential information from global cues. Third, there are no differences in how information from local and global cues is used among the three food-storing corvid species tested in this paradigm. The way in which landmarks are used by food-storing birds may be a general cognitive ability since they all must remember spatial positions of caches. The results of the experiments presented here show that food-storing birds are a good system in which to study landmark-use based on their spatial memory abilities and natural history.
Subject Area
Zoology|Psychobiology|Ecology
Recommended Citation
Gould-Beierle, Kristy Lynn, "The use of landmarks by food-storing corvids" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9819698.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9819698