Go Back
  • For Business
  • |
  • Warnings
  • Data Suite
  • Newsletters
  • Advertising
  • Superior Accuracy™
President Trump to visit flood-ravaged Kerrville as search continues Chevron right
New flash flood threat looms in Texas as heat scorches recovery zone. Chevron right

Columbus, OH

95°F
Location Chevron down
Location News Videos
Use Current Location
Recent

Columbus

Ohio

95°
No results found.
Try searching for a city, zip code or point of interest.
settings
Columbus, OH Weather
Today WinterCast Local {stormName} Tracker Hourly Daily Radar MinuteCast Monthly Air Quality Health & Activities

Around the Globe

Hurricane Tracker

Severe Weather

Radar & Maps

News

News & Features

Astronomy

Business

Climate

Health

Recreation

Sports

Travel

For Business

Warnings

Data Suite

Newsletters

Advertising

Superior Accuracy™

Video

Winter Center

AccuWeather Early Hurricane Center Top Stories Trending Today Astronomy Heat Climate Health Recreation In Memoriam Case Studies Blogs & Webinars

News / Weather News

Some birds may use ‘mental time travel,’ study finds

The ability to remember things that happened in the past is a hallmark of episodic memory. New research suggests it’s an ability humans may share with Eurasian jays.

By Kate Golembiewski, CNN

Published May 23, 2024 1:40 PM EDT | Updated May 23, 2024 1:40 PM EDT

Copied

Eurasian jays can recall incidental visual information within a remembered event, new research shows, providing evidence of episodic-like memory in the birds. (Philippe Clement/Arterra/Universal Images Group/Getty Images/FILE via CNN Newsource)

Editor's note: Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

(CNN) — Real quick — what did you have for lunch yesterday? Were you with anyone? Where were you? Can you picture the scene? The ability to remember things that happened to you in the past, especially to go back and recall little incidental details, is a hallmark of what psychologists call episodic memory — and new research indicates that it’s an ability humans may share with birds called Eurasian jays.

With episodic memory, “you’re remembering an event or an episode, hence the name,” said James Davies, first author of the study that appeared May 15 in the journal PLOS One. “You kind of mentally relive it. It also involves other kinds of details that make up that experience, so sounds, sights, even your thoughts or your mood at the time.”

Episodic memory differs from semantic memory, which is the recall of factual information, added Davies, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Cambridge’s Comparative Cognition Lab.

“It’s often helpful to think about episodic memory as remembering, whereas semantic memory is just knowing,” he said. “There’s not really a conscious recall involved.”

While episodic memory is integral to how most people experience the world, it can be difficult for scientists to prove whether nonhuman animals share this ability — after all, they can’t tell us what they’re thinking. However, for several decades, scientists have been devising experiments to delve into animals’ ability to remember previous events, and they have found evidence of episodic-like memory in creatures as varied as pigeons, dogs and cuttlefish.

Corvids — the group of birds that includes crows, ravens and jays — are famously smart, and previous studies have suggested that they are capable of episodic-like memory, which may help them find bits of food that they’ve hidden for later. In 1998, Dr. Nicola Clayton devised an experiment with scrub jays in which the birds appeared to remember what kinds of foods they’d hidden in different spots and how long ago.

This means of finding evidence of episodic-like recall — called a “what, when, where” protocol — has become standard among scientists studying animal memory. But Davies, who is Clayton’s advisee, wanted to find other ways to test for this cognitive capability.

“If you’re only using one methodology, then potentially there’s some error in that method,” Davies said. “If you use multiple different methodologies that test the same thing in quite different ways, then that leads to much more conclusive evidence.”

The researchers devised a fresh approach involving Eurasian jays, and what they found could have implications for the study of human memory.

Testing incidental memory

Davies and Clayton’s new experimental design drew upon the concept of incidental memory.

“The idea is that with human episodic memory, we remember details of events that, at the time, weren’t necessarily relevant to anything. We weren’t actively trying to remember this,” Davies said. “But then if you were to be asked about it a few days later, you might remember those details.”

To find out whether Eurasian jays are capable of "mental time travel," researchers worked with birds trained to find food hidden under cups. Here, a Eurasian jay observes food being put in a cup with blue string. (James Davies via CNN Newsource)

It’s a seemingly unimportant bit of information that you didn’t consciously commit to memory — for instance, remembering what you had for lunch yesterday. This aspect of episodic memory is sometimes referred to as “mental time travel.”

To find out whether Eurasian jays are capable of mental time travel, the researchers worked with birds that had been trained to find food hidden under cups. Davies set out a row of four identical red plastic cups and allowed the birds to observe him putting a piece of food under one of the cups. The jays then had to recall which cup the food had been hidden under. Easy enough.

For the next step of the experiment, Davies made little changes to the cups’ appearances, such as adding stickers or colorful strings, but once again hid the food under the same cup in the lineup. For a bird looking for a treat, those strings and stickers were seemingly unimportant incidental info — at this point, they only needed to worry about the position of the cup to find the food.

But in the final stage of the experiment, those little details of cup decoration became unexpectedly important. Davies changed the position of the cups so that the birds could no longer rely on the once-crucial information of which cup in the row contained food. (The treats had since been removed from the cups, to rule out the possibility that the birds were just finding the food by scent.) However, after a 10-minute break, the jays were still able to find the cups with the treats.

Davies suggested that the birds’ mental process might have involved asking themselves, “‘Where’s the food? I remember going to the one with the black square on it. I’ll go to that one,’” Davies said. The jays appeared to be going back in their memories to retrieve details about the cup decorations, and they were highly successful in using that information to find the hidden food.

“This study provides strong evidence for episodic memory in Eurasian jays,” said Dr. Jonathon Crystal, a provost professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Indiana Bloomington who was not involved with the project. “If you can answer that unexpected question after incidental encoding, that becomes a strong argument that you can remember back in time to the earlier episode, which is at the heart of documenting episodic memory.”

Crystal said that studies such as this one, which aim to identify animals’ abilities to form episodic memories, are important in part because of their potential role in the field of human memory research.

“The big disease of memory is Alzheimer’s disease, and of course, the most debilitating aspect of Alzheimer’s disease is a profound loss of episodic memory,” Crystal said.

Since Alzheimer’s drugs for humans invariably undergo animal testing before they reach human trials, he noted that it’s important for scientists to be able to drill down into whether these drugs actually affect the kind of memories that Alzheimer’s patients lose.

“It’s not enough to just improve memory, we need to improve episodic memory,” he said, and a better understanding of how to test for episodic-like memory in animals could help make that possible.

Continue Reading:

Hundreds of mammoth bones discovered in Austrian wine cellar
Scientists solve giant hummingbird mystery — with tiny backpacks
Punxsutawney Phil and Phyllis' babies named on Mother's Day

Kate Golembiewski is a freelance science writer based in Chicago who geeks out about zoology, thermodynamics and death.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

Report a Typo

Weather News

Weather News

A week after deadly Texas flooding, hope fades but resilience grows

Jul. 11, 2025
Severe Weather

Rounds of severe storms to rattle, drench central US

Jul. 11, 2025
Severe Weather

Is the US seeing worse flooding this summer? Here’s what’s happening

Jul. 11, 2025
video

Before-and-after pictures show devastation caused by Texas floods

Jul. 9, 2025
Severe Weather

Severe weather to rumble in the central US through the holiday weekend

Jul. 6, 2025
Weather News

Record sargassum seaweed piles up on Caribbean islands, Gulf

Jul. 2, 2025
Weather News

Alabama teen in ICU after lightning strike hits boat, causing burns an...

Jul. 2, 2025
Show more Show less Chevron down

Topics

AccuWeather Early

Hurricane Center

Top Stories

Trending Today

Astronomy

Heat

Climate

Health

Recreation

In Memoriam

Case Studies

Blogs & Webinars

Top Stories

Weather Forecasts

Thunderstorms to fuel flash flooding threat in Texas

42 minutes ago

Weather News

President Trump visits Texas Hill Country as flood recovery continues

5 hours ago

Weather News

Camp Mystic’s owner warned of floods for decades

9 hours ago

AccuWeather Ready

Is your house in a flood zone? This map has the answer

3 hours ago

Severe Weather

Is the US seeing worse flooding this summer? Here’s what’s happening

8 hours ago

More Stories

Featured Stories

Health

How can families handle new anxieties around summer camp?

4 hours ago

Weather News

Viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng celebrates her first birthday

8 hours ago

Weather News

Orcas are bringing humans gifts of food – but why?

8 hours ago

Business

Samsung is looking into more AI devices potentially including earrings...

8 hours ago

Weather News

The US has a plan to breed millions of flies and drop them from planes

1 day ago

AccuWeather Weather News Some birds may use ‘mental time travel,’ study finds
Company
Proven Superior Accuracy About AccuWeather Digital Advertising Careers Press Contact Us
Products & Services
For Business For Partners For Advertising AccuWeather APIs AccuWeather Connect RealFeel® and RealFeel Shade™ Personal Weather Stations
Apps & Downloads
iPhone App Android App See all Apps & Downloads
Subscription Services
AccuWeather Premium AccuWeather Professional
More
AccuWeather Ready Business Health Hurricane Leisure and Recreation Severe Weather Space and Astronomy Sports Travel Weather News Winter Center
Company
Proven Superior Accuracy About AccuWeather Digital Advertising Careers Press Contact Us
Products & Services
For Business For Partners For Advertising AccuWeather APIs AccuWeather Connect RealFeel® and RealFeel Shade™ Personal Weather Stations
Apps & Downloads
iPhone App Android App See all Apps & Downloads
Subscription Services
AccuWeather Premium AccuWeather Professional
More
AccuWeather Ready Business Health Hurricane Leisure and Recreation Severe Weather Space and Astronomy Sports Travel Weather News Winter Center
© 2025 AccuWeather, Inc. "AccuWeather" and sun design are registered trademarks of AccuWeather, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | About Your Privacy Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

...

...

...