News Neuroscience

Chickadees use memory ‘bar codes’ to find their hidden food stashes

The finding hints at how episodic memories are encoded in the brain

A photo of a perched black-capped chickadee where it is across from what looks like seeds stuck to wood with peanut butter. There's a cobweb stuck to the chickadee's beak that also falls into the food.

Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) (shown) store food for later in many thousands of small stashes. Logging the memory of these food stores uses what researchers have dubbed a “bar code” system in the brain.

blightylad-infocus/iStock/Getty Images Plus

By Jake Buehler

Much like squirrels, black-capped chickadees hide their food, keeping track of many thousands of little treasures wedged into cracks or holes in tree bark.