What animal-memory term means remembering what happened, where, and when?

The animal-memory term for remembering what happened, where, and when is episodic-like memory.

The “like” matters: researchers cannot directly determine whether an animal consciously re-experiences a past event, a key part of human episodic memory. Instead, they test behavior showing integrated memories of an event’s content, location, and timing.

Evidence first became prominent in 1998, when Nicola Clayton and Anthony Dickinson studied western scrub-jays. The birds remembered where they had cached different foods and adjusted their recovery choices according to how long the food had been stored and whether it was likely to have spoiled. This suggested a flexible what-where-when memory rather than a simple habit.

Researchers have since reported episodic-like abilities in species including scrub-jays, hummingbirds, pigeons, rats, primates, and honeybees. The term is not identical to procedural or muscle memory, which concern learned skills, nor to working memory, which temporarily holds information for an immediate task. Some scientists prefer “what-where-when memory” because it avoids claiming human-like conscious recollection.