Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli, Italy
Benjamin G Farrar
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE), Sweden, Sweden
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States; Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Eurasian jays have been reported to protect their caches by responding to cues about either the visual perspective or current desire of an observing conspecific, similarly to other corvids. Here, we used established paradigms to test whether these birds can – like humans – integrate multiple cues about different mental states and perform an optimal response accordingly. Across five experiments, which also include replications of previous work, we found little evidence that our jays adjusted their caching behaviour in line with the visual perspective and current desire of another agent, neither by integrating these social cues nor by responding to only one type of cue independently. These results raise questions about the reliability of the previously reported effects and highlight several key issues affecting reliability in comparative cognition research.
