Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)WIKIMEDIA, STEVEN PAVLOVOn March 14, 2004, Daniel Tammet correctly recited the first 22,514 digits of Pi over the course of five hours and nine minutes.
Less well-known, but similarly impressive, is the ability of a Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)—a bird commonly found along the western flanks of North America—to remember where it stores thousands of separate caches of food.
Tammet, who has autism spectrum disorder, is a savant. Some researchers have proposed that Clark’s nutcrackers might also represent a type of autistic savant. However, the unique abilities of a person with an autism spectrum disorder and savant syndrome usually comes at the price of social deficits.
Experts in animal cognition who have examined similar abilities in birds and other creatures maintain that nonhuman animals that exhibit savant-like behavior do not display any equivalent dysfunction. The prodigious memory of the Clark’s nutcracker seems to be accompanied by an enlarged hippocampus compared ...
