“It’s just mind-boggling that some jays can wait so long for their favourite food. The worst performers, ‘Dolci’ and ‘Homer’, could only wait a maximum of 20 seconds. Top of the class was ‘JayLo’, who ignored a piece of cheese and waited five and a half minutes for a mealworm. Could they delay immediate gratification and wait for their favourite food?Ī range of delay times was tested, from five seconds to five and a half minutes, before the mealworm was made available if the bird had resisted the temptation to eat the bread or cheese.Īll the birds in the experiment managed to wait for the worm, but some could wait much longer than others. The birds had to choose between bread or cheese - available immediately, and mealworm that they could see but could only get to after a delay, when a Perspex screen was raised. Mealworms are a common favourite bread and cheese come second but individuals vary in their preference for one over the other. Instead of marshmallows, the jays were presented with mealworms, bread and cheese. To test the self-control of ten Eurasian jays, Garrulus glandarius, researchers designed an experiment inspired by the 1972 Stanford Marshmallow test - in which children were offered a choice between one marshmallow immediately, or two if they waited for a period of time. The results are published today in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Self-control also enables them to wait for the right moment to hide their food without being seen or heard. Of all the corvids, jays in particular are vulnerable to having their caches stolen by other birds. The new results show that the link between intelligence and self-control exists across distantly related animal groups, suggesting it has evolved independently several times. The greater the intelligence, the greater the self-control. Self-control has been previously shown to be linked to intelligence in humans, chimpanzees and – in an earlier study by these researchers – in cuttlefish. The researchers think this may have driven the evolution of self-control in these birds. In other words, they need to delay immediate gratification to plan for future meals. Corvids hide, or ‘cache’, their food to save it for later. Jays are members of the corvid family, often nicknamed the ‘feathered apes’ because they rival non-human primates in their cognitive abilities. Self-control - the ability to resist temptation in favour of a better but delayed reward – is a vital skill that underpins effective decision-making and future planning. This is the first evidence of a link between self-control and intelligence in birds.
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