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8 - Memory in Hummingbirds

from Part II - Memory and Recall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2021

By
Maria Cristina Tello-Ramos  and
David J. Pritchard
Edited by
Allison B. Kaufman ,
Josep Call  and
James C. Kaufman
Allison B. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Josep Call
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
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Summary

Hummingbirds are faced with a challenging memory task every day. In order to keep a positive energy balance, these birds need to remember which flowers they have visited and which ones they have not. The properties of flowers provide hummingbirds with different types of information about colour, shape, space, and time to guide how they forage. Here we discuss how researchers have adapted established laboratory paradigms for use in the field to understand how hummingbirds use this information. We discuss why hummingbirds have turned out to be a suitable model to study cognition in the wild, the main findings that have established how to study memory in wild animals of a project expanding to three decades.

Keywords

memoryspatial memoryforaging behaviourtime-place learninghummingbirdstrapliningSelasphorus rufus.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Animal Cognition , pp. 174 - 189
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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