Female Great Tits Have Better Memories Than Males to Find Food

It turns out that female great tits have an excellent memory. Scientists have discovered that these female birds are much better at remember exactly where food was left in comparison to their male counterparts.

Great tits are highly intelligent songbirds that can be found in Europe. They constantly find new ways to find food, and even use tools, such as conifer needles, during foraging. Unlike other members of the tit family, though, great tits don't horde food. Instead, they examine where their hoarding relatives make a stash and then steal it for themselves.

In order to test for gender differences in this ability, the researchers first allowed caged great tits to watch marsh tits store away food in an indoor aviary. Then, one hour later, great tits of both sexes were released to search for the food. The scientists found that female great tits performed consistently better than the males. In fact, males only remembered where other birds stored food in 15 percent of cases. Females, in contrast, remembered in 40 percent of the cases.

Yet while female great tits are more skilled at finding caches, the males often push away females from available food sources.

"Whereas the males therefore have a more even and reliable food supply, lower-ranking females have to supplement their food by pilfering the stock piles of others," said Anders Brodin, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Therefore a good memory of where caches are to be found could go a long way to still their hunger."

The findings reveal a bit more about these birds' behavior. More specifically, it shows that females need their better memories in order to survive.

The findings are published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).