How good is your memory? Can you remember directions to a new location without writing them down, or a handful of friend’s phone numbers?
A Clark’s nutcracker will cache on the order of 50 to 80,000 seeds each autumn, and return to them over the course of the winter. They’ll cache 2-4 seeds in each location, meaning they’ll remember approximately 20,000 different seed locations.
That’s an amazing memory! They can even still find their caches under deep snow. Their brains actually swell as they create these caches, and then slowly reduce back to their summer size as they tick off each one.
Learn more about these amazing birds, and watch one in action in this video. While Clark’s nutcrackers subsist primarily on pine nut seeds, they are not above scavenging other objects. Watch the video to see what this bird found! And drop by our Facebook or Instagram page to ask questions, or let us know if you’ve ever seen behavior like this.
For more videos on animal intelligence, see Been Caught Stealin’: Ravens Behaving Badly and A Little Bird Told Me.
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Video and images © Jenny Golding