THE POWERFUL MEMORY
OF JAYS
Jays gather acorns and bury them in the ground for future use. Sometimes
they bury up to a thousand acorns in a day. Everything in a forest looks
alike. This is why it is difficult even for human beings to find a certain place
in a forest. So how can jays find the places where they have hidden their
acorns? They act intelligently and mark these places using tree branches or
pieces of stone. Still, it is quite difficult to find something buried in a forest.
However experiments have revealed that these birds can find their acorns
even nine months later. It is a miracle of creation that these birds have such
a powerful memory that they can mark the places where they hide their
food and then remember these places.
It is certainly not possible to explain the decision of a jay,
which does not have intellect as we understand it, to hide
acorns by burying them in the ground or marking these se-
cret places to find them in the future as oc-
curring by coincidence.
Burying a thousand acorns and marking
their places with stones and branches in an or-
derly way is certainly something that a
bird cannot achieve on its own. It is very
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