Clark nutcrackers amazing memory
Clark nutcrackers amazing memory
Wang Jin at 8:57 on November 3, 2006
Can accurately identify a year ago, buried in 5000 in different parts of the food
You have been to the East of Tibet can be found in a place where I thought, where did the results you have forgotten the experience? If you are at home will be thousands of banknotes hidden in thousands of different places, eleven months later you can find? I bet you can not. Unless you are a Clark nutcrackers.
Clark nutcrackers memory, and can be found a year ago, buried in 5000 in different parts of the grain
According to ABC reports, Clark nutcrackers is a very small bird, only 33 cm long, white hip and tail angle is one of the most famous intelligent crow. Clark's nutcrackers little bigger than a crow, has a long tongue for temporary food special "pocket", called sublingual capsule. When they find easy to store grain and other food, they eat on a few mouthfuls, and then the remaining grain and capsules to swallow the sublingual pouch, filled, spit on the fly to the right place buried grain.
For winter food reserves, most of Clark's nutcrackers are in hard labor, they gathered in the pine forest, and then buried in a far away place. Every autumn, a Clark nutcrackers to 22000-33000 pine buried in 5000 different places, covering about 15 square miles.
Clark nutcrackers for food storage sites, there are strict requirements, never sloppy. Generally not susceptible to multi-_select_ in the sunny snow-covered areas, such as dry mountains and hills, slopes, etc. Guangshan bald. Then, sixty-seven hidden in a grain. They work very seriously, first with claws dug loose soil, then planted grain, and then covered with soil, and title to the straw or broken branches, will be buried point of camouflage. After all the layout, Clark nutcrackers will be put in place a food storage pebbles as tokens.
Clark nutcrackers store food in many areas, but not immediately use; only in the winter or early spring, food scarce, the only point-by-dug burial, food grain storage. Clark nutcrackers have a remarkable memory, no matter how long after a lapse of the total Tibetan food will not forget their place.
For decades, scientists have wondered how these nutcrackers are gone again after nearly a year to find those who pine for? It is hard to imagine a bird's brain can remember so many different places.
Search for buried pine game, the students lost to Clark nutcrackers
University of New Hampshire and animal behaviorist psychology assistant Brett Gibson said: "This is an amazing skill." In recent years, Gibson has been studying the Clark nutcrackers, trying to find the secret of their amazing memory. Of course, not just in his research, other scientists have been studying the same field.
In 1977, the U.S. Northern Arizona University biologist Russell Balda and his colleagues began to study in the laboratory Clark nutcrackers, they let Clark nutcrackers food buried in the sand, and found that the bird does not concerned about landforms, they buried food, and did not choose to have the same characteristics of the burial site. After they buried the researchers deliberately change the sand after the food landscape, Clark nutcrackers or find food in half an hour, these birds can be 60% -90% of the pine to find out.
The researchers imagine, it just happens to be Clark nutcrackers find pine it? They are not aimlessly around Fannong, until pine nuts Fannong out of date it? To test this idea, Barda got a student, he let the students burying pine nuts, after 30 days, then the pine nuts to find out the results of the students lost to Clark nutcrackers, his results do not exceed Clark nutcrackers on the half. This shows that mere chance, Clark nutcrackers can not be within half an hour to find so many pine nuts.
Clark nutcrackers on the spatial orientation of the memory far more than human
If there are no other reasons why the Clark nutcrackers to find pine nuts, then their ability to remember spatial orientation is far more than human.
Clark nutcrackers and crows and ravens are very pro-big, they are considered to be the most intelligent birds, have a good memory, but Clark nutcrackers is ranked first.
Gibson believes that Clark nutcrackers to its environment "cognitive map", it can accurately return to the burial point. He and others studies have shown that Clark nutcrackers smart enough to determine the distance between marks and direction. If food were buried in two tags, even if the tag is moved to a place far, Clark nutcrackers also will return to the middle position. Gibson said: "This tells us how to use the tag information in them will be very flexible."
Scientists believe that the nutcrackers memory research will better understand and treat our own memory, there's some problems. Because the human memory, we have a number of mystery.
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