Scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) form integrated memories of the multiple features of caching episodes

Four experiments examined whether food-storing scrub jays remember when and where they cached different foods. The scrub jays cached and recovered per ishable and nonperishable foods in visuospatially distinct and trial-unique cache sites. They rapidly learned to avoid searching for foods that had pe rished by the time of recovery, while continuing to search for the same foo ds after shorter retention intervals when the foods were still fresh. The t emporal control of searching at recovery was also observed when the familia rity of cache sites did not provide any information about the time of cachi ng and when the same food was cached in distinct sites at different times. The authors argue that the jays formed an integrated memory for the locatio n and time of caching of particular foods.