Meeting Abstract
Nest building is fundamental to successful reproduction for most birds. In spite of its importance, however, rather little is known about the decision making that is involved in building. Indeed, it is still commonly assumed that the nest that is built is the product of an innate template. But there are increasing data to show that learning and memory play a role in a variety of decisions that birds make (including associations between material properties, environmental conditions and reproductive success, and who to copy) when building and there are now also data to indicate which parts of the brain might be activated when birds build. Together the behavioural and neural activation data provide a model for examining the mechanistic bases of physical cognition, including the roles of perception, motor output and a variety of cognitive processes.
