Some birds may use ‘mental time travel’: study [Video]

Real quick — what did you have for lunch yesterday? Were you with anyone? Where were you? Can you picture the scene? The ability to remember things that happened to you in the past, especially to go back and recall little incidental details, is a hallmark of what psychologists call episodic memory — and new research indicates that it’s an ability humans may share with birds called Eurasian jays.

With episodic memory, “you’re remembering an event or an episode, hence the name,” said James Davies, first author of the study that appeared May 15 in the journal PLOS One. “You kind of mentally relive it. It also involves other kinds of details that make up that experience, so sounds, sights, even your thoughts or your mood at the time.”

Episodic memory differs from semantic memory, which is the recall of factual information, added Davies, a doctoral student in psychology at the …