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Wild birds 'remember' where and when they find food

www.bbc.co.uk Wild birds 'remember' where and when they find food

Blue and great tits are "opportunistic foragers" and exhibit "episodic-like memory", a study shows.

Wild birds 'remember' where and when they find food

Small wild birds have demonstrated an ability to recall what they have eaten in the past, where they found it and when, a new study has shown.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UEA) studied the feeding habits of blue tits and great tits.

In the "first experiment of its kind to involve wild animals", the birds exhibited an "episodic-like" memory to cope with changes in food availability when foraging.

That memory system - a "conscious recollection of personally experienced events" was previously thought to be "uniquely human", researchers said.

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