SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"We all use spatial memory to navigate our environment," says lead author Carrie Branch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Without memory there's no learning and an organism would have to start from scratch for every task. So, it really is life and death for these birds to be able to remember where they stashed their food. We've been able to show that natural selection is shaping their ability to remember locations."
If natural selection (survival of the fittest) is shaping chickadee memory, certain criteria have to be met. There has to be variation in the trait: some chickadees are indeed better than others at re-finding their stores. There has to be a fitness advantage: birds that perform better on a spatial memory task are more likely to survive and produce offspring. Importantly, variation in the trait must have a genetic basis.
"Environment does still matter a lot in terms of shaping behavior, but our work here suggests that genes may create the brain structures, and then experience and learning can build on top of that," Branch explains.
How do you measure a chickadee's memory? Senior author Vladimir Pravosudov and his team at the University of Nevada, Reno, designed arrays of "smart" feeders to measure memory in a population of wild Mountain Chickadees in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Each feeder is equipped with radio frequency identification sensors. The 42 birds tested were fitted with leg tags the size of a grain of rice which give off an identifying signal. Each bird was assigned to one of the eight feeders in each array. The feeder sensor reads the bird's ID tag and if it's the matching feeder for that individual, a mechanism opens the door, and the bird gets a seed. The scientists then tracked how many tries it took before the birds consistently went to the correct feeder.
"This is an effective system to test spatial learning and memory in hundreds of wild chickadees in their natural environment," said Pravosudov. "We have previously shown that even very small variations in performance are associated with differences in survival."
Journal Reference:
Can't find your keys? You need a chickadee brain: Scientists identify a link between spatial memory and genes in a bird
(DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.10.036)
(Score: 2, Funny) by DaTrueDave on Thursday November 11 2021, @12:14AM
How can this be? And where are my keys?
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday November 11 2021, @01:19AM (1 child)
Could it be Mighty Chickadee? [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @11:00AM
A Mighty Buzzard brain probably would not help. Unless there was carrion about your keys. Ick!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @04:08PM (1 child)
my belief is that we are failures of evolution. like evolving antlers.
the "high society" in biology has already evolved to become invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 17 2021, @03:26AM
Antlers at least have a use.
My foreskin was cut off without my being asked. No use? Looks? Invisible man said so?
Are we failures or just the latest batch of results from a eon long experiment in survival
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 11 2021, @04:20PM (2 children)
People who seem to have a disorganized space are always the ones who know EXACTLY where any single particular item can be found.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @07:10PM (1 child)
In a lot of those "disorganized" spaces, the person is using their space as external memory storage. Some people don't get that there's a difference between something looking like it's a massive mess and being a massive mess. Just straightening everything into disorganized stacks does not mean it's neater than when it was an organized pile. And while we're at it, putting a massive mess behind a door does not mean that it's not a massive mess, it just means that you're not seeing it so you can build up a much larger mess to deal with later on. The bits you can't see should really always be more organized than the bits you can see.
Anyways, lost keys aren't a memory problem, if you're having to remember where they are you have an organizational and/or attentional issue, not a memory issue. Keys should always go in the same place or, at least, you should be paying attention to where you put them, which is ideally in the same place every time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 17 2021, @03:31AM
That is how keys, et al,become lost. You always put them in the same place. That one time you absentmindedly put them down is when you forget as your brain does not trigger the "important event! remember this!" function.