How North Island robins hide and seek their snacks

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-03-19 11:01

New Zealand

PHOTO: Dr Tas Vámos

The toutouwai is one of many animal species that store away their food somewhere to retrieve it later when they’re feeling peckish. Two NZ researchers gave toutouwai living in Wellington’s Zealandia Ecosanctuary two kinds of memory tasks to see if each bird’s memory abilities have any link to their snack-storing behaviour. The birds that performed especially well on the spatial memory tasks hid their food at a farther distance, suggesting those with better memories can afford to create safer, more distant storage sites with little risk of forgetting. Meanwhile, the birds with poorer spatial memory abilities must choose nearby sites that are at risk of being stolen by competitors.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

The toutouwai is a small songbird that stores food for later retrieval, a behaviour known as ‘caching’. In this study, we found that individual toutouwai that performed better on a cognitive task testing spatial memory were more likely to store their food further away from where it was acquired. These results suggest that individuals with better memories can afford to create safer, more distant caches with little risk of forgetting, while those with poorer spatial memory abilities must choose nearby sites that are at risk of being stolen by competitors.

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Research The Royal Society, Web page URL after publication

Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Victoria University of Wellington

Funder: This research was funded by a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (VUW1604) from The Royal Society Te Apārangi granted to R.C.S and an associated Ph.D. scholarship to T.I.F.V

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