Apr. 20, 2012
Killers of a feather don’t always flock together… – Matty Malaprop
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Ravens Remember Relationships They Had With Others
But how do they know if they remember the call, or just responding in a predictable way to the sound of the call at that particular moment? - DG
Ravens Remember Relationships They Had With Others
In daily life we remember faces and voices of several known individuals. Similarly, mammals have been shown to remember calls and faces of known individuals after a number of years. Markus Boeckle and Thomas Bugnyar from the Department of Cognitive Biology of the University of Vienna show in their recent article, published in Current Biology, that ravens differentiate individuals based on familiarity.
Additionally, they discovered that ravens memorize the closeness of a relationship and affiliation.
Until now it was unknown whether ravens could remember the closeness of a relationship based on former positive or negative interactions. In response to calls of formerly known individuals ravens not only increase the number of calls but also change call characteristics dependent on whether they hear former "friends" or "foes." This suggests that ravens remember specific individuals at least for three years. [continue]
Tags: birds, corvids, memory, ravens
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marianne on -
Before Doone posted the result of the article, my first though was that other mamals must have recognition memory of other mamals either of their own kind or different kind...and also that memory must differ acording to species, so homo sapiens is not that great !
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Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on -
That cracked me up. I'm so easily amused.
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on -
Observatory
Ravens Can Recognize Old Friends, and Foes, Too
Cyril RussoRavens that had once lived together in groups could years later recognize recent recordings of one another’s voices.
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: April 23, 2012
The birds spend up to the first 10 years of their life living in groups, without a mate, so the ability to recognize friends and foes is crucial. In the journal Current Biology, researchers led by Markus Böckle, a zoologist at the University of Vienna, describe a group of 12 juvenile ravens that were kept together for three years, until they reached sexual maturity and paired off.
During this time, the researchers watched and noted the birds’ interactions. Some were friendly with one another and some were not.
“When it’s a friendly individual, they use a friendly voice,” Mr. Böckle said. “If it’s a bird they don’t like, they try to elongate the vocal track, and the call sounds deeper.”
The birds were then placed in different locations in Austria and Germany in pairs. After three years, Mr. Böckle recorded the separated birds and played back their calls to one another. “After three years of separation we played back this stimulus, and if they heard a friend, then they called out in a friendly voice,” he said.
Interestingly, the recordings were made only six months before the birds heard them. In the years of separation, a bird’s calls may have changed slightly, Mr. Böckle said. “So they have to recognize the individual, not a particular call,” he said.
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