Those Super-Smart Scrub Jays

While a biblical creation science ministry is hard work, it can be fun at times. Learning new things is fun for me. East of the Mississippi live scrub jays, which I had not heard of before. The Western scrub jay has been officially renamed to California scrub jay — not that it pays California no nevermind. Other scrub jays apparently keep their established names.

Excellent image of a California scub jay, Wikimedia Commons / VJAnderson (CC by-SA 4.0)

When I first saw the article featured below, I thought it was just another name for the blue jays that are common in these parts. (I also thought a scrub jay would help with the dishes, but that idea was wrong.) While our jays are in that same corvid family of intelligent birds, they have some distinct differences. We have seen some intelligent antics from our blue jays (well, they come to our feeders and in the yard, hence, "our" jays). Studies have shown that scrub jays are troubling to evolutionists.

They have a passel of neurons packed into their brains, which are surprisingly large for birds. Jays are very smart, displaying their intelligence in many ways, including reasoning and planning skills. This is contrary to baryon-to-bird evolution, but very much in accord with the design skills of our Creator.

Recent experiments on two species of scrub jays in the western United States (Woodhouse’s and California) showed that these birds have the ability to remember the who, what, where, and when of specific past events. That means they can recall where they cached a food item and who, if anyone, was watching them do it. In scientific jargon, this is called episodic memory.

Until these experiments, scientists thought that only humans had the ability to remember specific, detailed events in the past. But scrub jays can remember where they store thousands of seeds during a single season—up to 200 different hiding spots. They retrieve that food in winter and early spring when fresh food is sparse. They can also adjust their caching behavior with future needs in mind. 

To read this fascinating article in its entirety or listen to the MP3 done by my favorite reader, click on "Scrub Jays—The Ultimate Bird Brain". The short video below has some excellent footage, but the name is misleading. By the way, why the expression, "Naked as a jay bird?" I've never seen any bird wearing clothing, champ.