Long-term memory in wild falcons

Abstract

Long-term memory — information retention over long timescales — can allow animals to retain foraging skills and efficiently respond to seasonally available resources and changing environments¹. Most long-term memory research is with captive species, focusing on spatial, individual or object recognition, with less known about wild species and the retention of motor task abilities, as in the case of complex foraging skills^2,3. We have examined whether wild striated caracaras (Phalcoboenus australis), recently shown to rapidly and flexibly innovate with an eight-task puzzle box⁴, retain task memories one year later. We found that, despite no reinforcement, caracaras repeated motor techniques that led to their most recent success on tasks the year prior, solving nearly twice as fast as a naïve control group and four times faster than when naïve. Our results suggest long-term memory may be important for non-migratory opportunistic generalists, particularly in remote island environments with seasonally available resources, and further highlight how striated caracaras are promising candidates for avian cognitive studies.