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Piero Amodio

University of Cambridge and Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, as listed in the 2021 paper

Piero Amodio shares equal contribution credit with Johanni Brea on Testing two competing hypotheses for Eurasian jays’ caching for the future. The paper appeared in Scientific Reports on 12 January 2021. Its other authors are Benjamin G. Farrar, Ljerka Ostojić and Nicola S. Clayton. It lists Amodio at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn’s Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms. These are publication-time affiliations.

The contribution statement credits Amodio with collecting data for both experiments. He shared data collection for Experiment 1 with Ostojić and Farrar, and collected Experiment 2 data himself. He wrote the first manuscript draft with critical input from Brea and Ostojić. Brea and Ostojić designed the study in discussion with the other authors.

The study tested whether jays cached according to future availability or past scarcity. A spatially uniform model best explained the data from six final-test birds in each experiment. This result concerns the mechanism of a specific behaviour. It neither establishes nor rules out conscious experience in jays. The paper supports a profile of Amodio’s experimental contribution, without establishing an exclusive metaphysical position on consciousness.

Known for. Joint first author of the 2021 Eurasian jay study comparing future planning and compensatory caching

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