We have a rather large number of Blue Jays that frequent our backyard.
The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both.
Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one.
The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way.
They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell.
Fascinating.
They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.
We have two types jays that visit us. Scrub and Stellar. They come into the kitchen (door off the deck) to stand and sort through the bowl of peanuts in the shell. It’s hilarious to watch them go through them, finding the heaviest (?) ones, tossing the rejects to and fro. They’re completely unafraid of us. They are a great joy to watch.
The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both.
Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one.
The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way.
They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell.
Fascinating.
They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.