Cache (biology)

Caches or food caches are stores of food made by many species of animals for future consumption. They are usually hidden from the sight of competing individuals of the same species as well as others. [Vander Wall, Stephen B. (1990) Food Hoarding in Animals. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226847357]

Many species will spread the caches across multiple locations so as to reduce total loss from pilferage. [Hampton, R. R. & Sherry, D. F. (1994) The effects of cache loss on choice of cache sites in the black-capped chickadee. Behav. Ecol. 5:44-50] Caching behaviour is also associated with the ability to remember these multiple locations. [Joanna M. Dally, Nathan J. Emery, Nicola S. Clayton (2005= Cache protection strategies by western scrub-jays, Aphelocoma californica: implications for social cognition. Animal Behaviour 70(6):1251-1263]

Some species are particularly wary of onlooking individuals during cacheing and ensure that the cache locations are secret. [Joanna M. Dally, Nathan J. Emery, Nicola S. Clayton (2006) Food-Caching Western Scrub-Jays Keep Track of Who Was Watching When. Science 312(5780):1662-1665 doi:10.1126/science.1126539] [Heinrich, B. & Pepper, J. W. (1998) Infuence of competitors on caching behavior in the common raven, "Corvus corax". Anim. Behav. 56:1083-1090] [N. J. Emery & N. S. Clayton (2001) Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays. Nature 414:443-446 doi:10.1038/35106560]

References

External links

* http://www.animalbehavioronline.com/cacheretrieval.html