Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop’s Fable experiments

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1 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
2 SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States
3 Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States
4 Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States
5 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1616v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Animal Behavior, Zoology
Keywords
Western scrub-jay, Aesop's Fable, Comparative cognition, Flexible behavior, Non-caching paradigm
Copyright
© 2015 Logan et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Logan CJ, Harvey BD, Schlinger BA, Rensel M. 2015. Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop’s Fable experiments. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1616v1

Abstract

Western scrub-jays are known for their highly discriminatory and flexible behaviors in a caching (food storing) context. However, it is unknown whether their cognitive abilities are restricted to a caching context. To explore this question, we tested scrub-jays in a non-caching context using the Aesop’s Fable paradigm, where a partially filled tube of water contains a floating food reward and objects must be inserted to displace the water and bring the food within reach. We found that scrub-jays did not attend to the functional properties of objects or tubes, and were not motivated to participate in these experiments, suggesting that either this paradigm was ecologically irrelevant or perhaps their flexibility is restricted to a caching context.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Choice order across all 20 trials per individual in each experiment

The order in which the more functional choices (dark gray: water, heavy, light, rewarded color, connected) or less functional choices (light gray: sand, light, heavy, unrewarded color, unconnected) were chosen (columns) and whether the bird successfully obtained the food (marked with an X) for trials 1-20 (rows).

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1616v1/supp-1