![]() ![]() Seemingly, this is an indication of self-awareness and a capacity for qualities such as empathy. Even more intriguing are magpies, which join the select company of humans and great apes, elephants, dolphins and orcas in recognizing their own images in mirrors. By a process of elimination, an ornithologist designed an experiment that demonstrated how the nutcrackers oriented to landmarks in the environment to build three-dimensional mental maps. Surpassing the memory skills of most humans, “n one fall season, a single nutcracker may store tens of thousands of pine seeds in as many as 5,000 different mini-caches, which he will retrieve in winter.” Strycker writes about how bird fanciers puzzled over this feat, since the birds left no obvious signs of how they did it. The author pinpoints experiments beginning in the 1970s that examined the amazing memory of nutcrackers, which were able to survive cold winters at high elevations by stashing pine seeds in the ground. ![]() Birding associate editor Strycker ( Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica, 2011) backs up his claim that “ird behavior offers a mirror in which we can reflect on human behavior.” ![]()
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