ABOVE: A toutouwai eats a mealworm that it retrieved after swiveling open a lid.
RACHAEL SHAW
New Zealand’s North Island robins (Petroica longipes), known as toutouwai in Maori, are capable of remembering a foraging task taught to them by researchers for up to 22 months in the wild, according to a study published on February 12 in Biology Letters. These results echo the findings of a number of laboratory studies of long-term memory in animals, but offer a rare example of a wild animal retaining a learned behavior with no additional training. The study also has implications for conservation and wildlife management: given the birds’ memory skills, researchers might be able to teach them about novel threats and resources in their constantly changing habitat.
“This is the first study to show [memory] longevity in the wild,” says Vladimir Pravosudov, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, who was ...
