[ExI] More Bird IQ demonstration

[Chris Hibbert]

  BillK wrote:
>
> How a 5-Ounce Bird Stores 10,000 Maps in its Head
> Robert Krulwich 12/3/2015
>
> <http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/03/how-a-5-ounce-bird-stores-10000-maps-in-its-head/>
>
> Quote:
> It weighs only four or five ounces, its brain practically nothing, and
> yet, oh my God, what this little bird can do. It?s astonishing.
>
> Around now, as we begin December, the Clark?s nutcracker has,
> conservatively, 5,000 (and up to 20,000) treasure maps in its head.
> They?re accurate, detailed, and instantly retrievable.
>
> It?s been burying seeds since August. It?s hidden so many (one study
> says almost 100,000 seeds) in the forest, meadows, and tree nooks that
> it can now fly up, look down, and see little x?s marking those
> spots?here, here, not there, but here?and do this for maybe a couple
> of miles around. It will remember these x?s for the next nine months.

When we were hiking in the high Sierras, we listened to a talk by one of 
the park rangers, who talked about the Clark's Nutcracker. According to 
him, it's even more amazing. They don't just remember the visible 
markers, they understand them well enough that they can find the nuts 
they buried even when there's 10 feet of snow. No, wait-when the snow 
drifts to 25 feet deep in places. They'll have a good enough idea of 
where they're going that they can dig down (diagonally, according to the 
ranger) through the snow to the spot they buried a nut 4 months earlier. 
Of course when the snow is laying thick on the ground is when they're 
hungriest, so it makes sense that they'd commit to memory, not the 
visible landmarks, but those that will still be visible when there's 10 
feet of snow covering everything.

Chris
-- 
It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but not so
easy to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.
-- Lech Walesa on reverting to a market economy.

Chris Hibbert
hibbert at mydruthers.com
http://mydruthers.com