Which bird was first used to demonstrate episodic-like memory in animals?

Which bird was first used to demonstrate episodic-like memory in animals? The western scrub jay. In landmark work by Nicola Clayton and Anthony Dickinson, these birds showed memory for what they had cached, where they cached it, and when the caching occurred.

Western scrub jays hide food for later, so researchers could test memory in a natural behavioral setting. The birds remembered the locations and types of cached food and adjusted recovery choices according to whether food was perishable and how much time had passed. That combination supplied the behavioral evidence for episodic-like, or “what-where-when,” memory.

The term is deliberately cautious. Human episodic memory includes conscious recollection, something researchers cannot directly verify in a non-speaking animal. Critics have proposed that some results might reflect simpler learning mechanisms, but the scrub jay experiments remain the classic starting point for research on animal episodic-like memory. Other species, including pigeons, hummingbirds, rats, and primates, were studied later.