Imagery in wild birds: Retrieval of visual information from referential alarm calls

Japanese tits (Parus minor) produce specific alarm calls when they encounter a predatory snake. A recent field experiment showed that receiver tits became visually perceptive to an object resembling a snake when hearing these calls. However, the tits did not respond to the same object when hearing other call types or when the object was dissimilar to a snake. These findings provide the first experimental evidence for the retrieval of a visual search image from specific alarm calls, offering a novel approach for investigating the cognitive mechanisms underlying referential communication in wild animals.