Object caching in corvids: incidence and significance.

Food caching is a paramount model for studying relations between cognition, brain organisation and ecology in corvids. In contrast, behaviour towards inedible objects is poorly examined and understood. We review the literature on object caching in corvids and other birds, and describe an exploratory study on object caching in ravens, New Caledonian crows and jackdaws.

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and orangutan (Pongo abelii) forethought: self-control and pre-experience in the face of future tool use.

Planning for future needs has traditionally been considered to be restricted to human cognition. Although recent studies on great ape and corvid cognition challenge this belief, the phylogenesis of human planning remains largely unknown. The complex skill for future planning has not yet been satisfactorily established in any other extant primate species than our own.