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TPO 66- Speaking Question 4

Listen to part of a lecture from a biology class.

So many animals have developed ways to store food for later. They find extra food and save it for times when less food is available. This process of storing food for later is known as hoarding, but not all hoarding is the same.

Different animal species use different hoarding strategies, depending on their abilities. So let’s look at two different hoarding strategies and why different animals may use them. First of all, some animals hoard food by storing all the food in one location, so they have a big pile of food in one place. This strategy can work for animals that are capable of defending the food supply from other animals, physically preventing other animals from taking it.

For example, certain squirrels that eat the seeds in pine cones will store a single big mound of pine cones under a tree. It might seem like other squirrels or birds could easily steal the whole pile of pine cones. But these squirrels are aggressive and good at chasing other animals away.

Other weaker animals may not be able to defend their stored food against competitors so easily, so they may use another hoarding strategy, dispersing the food, dividing it up, and hiding it in many different locations. With this dispersal strategy, even if other animals find some of the food, they are unlikely to find all of it. For this strategy to work, the animal must have a good memory so it can remember all the places it put the food to find it later.

For example, there is a species of rat in the desert that engages in this behavior.

They bury seeds in various locations in the sand. And scientists have found this rat can accurately remember hundreds of storage locations.