Field observations of time-place behaviour in scavenging birds

Encoding the spatial location and the time at which significant biological events occur is thought to be a fundamental way in which one form of memory is organized in animals (Gallistel, 1990, The Organization of Learning. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). If this is true, one would expect to find evidence...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Behavioural processes Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 77 - 88
Main Authors:	Wilkie, Donald M., Carr, Jason A.R., Siegenthaler, Amy, Lenger, Birgit, Liu, Michael, Kwok, Matthew
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Shannon Elsevier B.V 01-10-1996 Elsevier
Subjects:	Animal ethology Anticipation Anticipatory flocking Aves Biological and medical sciences Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Scavenging birds Time-place behaviour Vertebrata Canada British Columbia North America America Scavenging birds Anticipation Anticipatory flocking Time-place behaviour Feeding behavior Population number Cognition Time Foraging behavior Necrophagous Vertebrata Spatial distribution Coding Aves Localization Field study
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Summary:	Encoding the spatial location and the time at which significant biological events occur is thought to be a fundamental way in which one form of memory is organized in animals (Gallistel, 1990, The Organization of Learning. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). If this is true, one would expect to find evidence of this process in a wide variety of animals and in a wide number of situations. We report field observations of scavenging birds at two outdoor locations at which people tend to congregate and eat food, primarily around midday. Scavenging birds appeared to anticipate this peak in food availability and arrived at these locations before the number of people was at a maximum; time of day, not the absolute number of people, was the best predictor of the number of birds at both sites. At a third location where food is not consumed this relationship was not observed. Taken together these observations support the notion that animals represent the spatial and temporal characteristics of biologically important events and use this knowledge to forage efficiently.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:	0376-6357 1872-8308
DOI:	10.1016/0376-6357(96)00026-5