ABSTRACT
Some birds and mammals store food in scattered locations and find it again days, weeks, or even months later using memory (Sherry, 1985). The analysis of their memory incorporates the methods and insights of natural history, behavioral ecology, animal cognition, comparative psychology, and neuroscience. I begin this chapter by briefly reviewing what we know about memory in food-storing birds, particularly the chickadees and titmice (Paridae). The importance of good spatial memory for a food-storing way of life raises the question whether memory for stored food is in some sense an adaptive specialization (Rozin & Kalat, 1971). The main part of the chapter describes some results from a program of research that has tackled this question by comparing memory for stored and encountered food in storing species and by comparing memory of storing and nonstoring species in a variety of tasks.
