Abstract
Eurasian jays have been reported to protect their caches by responding to cues about either the visual perspective or current desire of an observing conspecific, similarly to other corvids. Here, we used established paradigms to test whether these birds can - like humans - integrate multiple cues about different mental states and perform an optimal response accordingly. Across five experiments, which also include replications of previous work, we found little evidence that our jays adjusted their caching behaviour in line with the visual perspective and current desire of another agent, neither by integrating these social cues nor by responding to only one type of cue independently. These results raise questions about the reliability of the previously reported effects and highlight several key issues affecting reliability in comparative cognition research.
Highlights
Experimental Procedure Subjects Ten California scrub jays (4 female, 6 male) and six Eurasian jays (3 female, 3 male) participated in the pilfering experiment, and nine California scrub jays (4 female, 5 male) and seven Eurasian jays (2 female, 5 male) participated in the caching experiment
California scrub jays were housed in pairs in indoor mesh cages and tested in cages of 1 x 1 x 1m
Outside of testing all jays had ad libitum access to their maintenance diet consisting of a mix of dog biscuits, seeds, nuts, cheese, vegetables and fruits
Summary
Experimental Procedure Subjects Ten California scrub jays (4 female, 6 male) and six Eurasian jays (3 female, 3 male) participated in the pilfering experiment, and nine California scrub jays (4 female, 5 male) and seven Eurasian jays (2 female, 5 male) participated in the caching experiment. Pilfering Experiment Jays first experienced a pre-feeding phase, in which they had access to either a handful of maintenance diet (MD – baseline), 50 pieces of food A or 50 pieces of food B. In the two test trials (pre-fed food A and food B), the experimenter put a bowl containing the other type of food outside of the jays’ cage/compartment to control for simple visual and olfactory cues.
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