Dn the vast class of birds, the pheasant does not pass for a genius. Where crows or parrots dazzle scientists with their intelligence and learning abilities, the pheasant looks like a dark fool. Mistake ; double error, even. Of course, there is nothing dark about it. “His colors are just wonderfulrecalls Robert Heathcote, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom. If it weren’t so common everywhere, nature lovers would travel the world to see it. »
But even his supposed stupidity turns out to be deceptive. “He simply developed the intelligence suited to his way of life”, assures the researcher. In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolutionon January 23, he and his colleagues from Bristol and Exeter have even just demonstrated that his cognitive performance, in particular in the field of memory, played directly on his survival skills.
The scientists thus released 126 pheasants, bred in captivity, and monitored their behavior. Thanks to a new generation of beacons, both miniaturized and capable of recording the behavior of birds every six seconds for six months, they have delimited the “home range” of each bird. In other words, its usual area which is sufficient for it to cover its primary needs. At the end of the six-month observation period, they read the meters.
Spectacular results
They found that 40% of the birds had perished, mostly devoured by their main predator, the fox. Above all, they observed that they had died, for the most part, on the outskirts of this famous vital domain. The reason is not the concentration of predators, but the inexperience of the prey. Indeed, in the same area, birds familiar with the area die much less than others. Robert Heathcote explains it easily: “Foxes have their positioning habits, which pheasants get to know. Moreover, over time, the birds discover the best rescue routes. »
The British researchers did not stop there in their conclusions. Because before releasing the birds, they had subjected the juveniles, a few weeks old, to several cognitive tests, including that of the labyrinth. The results were spectacular. On the one hand, the researchers found that the size of each bird’s home range was proportional to their performance in the maze, in other words to their long-term spatial memory. But they also found that short-term memory appeared to be just as important in predicting an animal’s chance of survival. “To have a beneficial effect, knowing where a recently visited emergency exit is – short-term memory – must be combined with knowing where the risk areas are – long-term memory”interprets the British researcher.
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