Agouti Seed Cache Lab (2D)

Caching Strategy

Cache spacing 1.6

Minimum distance an agouti keeps between its own caches. Wider spacing means fewer caches sit close enough for a pilferer to find several at once.

Memory strength 0.65

How reliably an agouti recalls its own cache locations. Weaker memory means more caches are abandoned — and become available for seed dispersal.

Pilferage pressure 0.60

How aggressively other animals and rival agoutis search for and raid unattended caches.

Live Cache Tracking

Caches made

Recovered

Pilfered

Germinated

How it works — scatter-hoarding & seed dispersal

Agoutis are scatter-hoarders: instead of stockpiling all their seeds in one larder, they bury them one or two at a time across many separate, well-spaced caches. That is not sloppiness — it is an anti-theft strategy. A pilferer that stumbles on one small cache only steals a couple of seeds; a pilferer that finds a larder loses the hoarder everything at once. Switch to Larder mode to see the difference: fewer discovery events, but each one is catastrophic.

Agoutis also have imperfect spatial memory. They recover most of their own caches later to eat, but a fraction are always forgotten. A forgotten cache that also escapes pilferage is exactly the mechanism by which scatter-hoarders disperse seeds: left buried and undisturbed long enough, it can germinate into a new seedling — the real ecological service scatter-hoarders like agoutis provide to trees such as the Brazil nut, which depends on them for regeneration.

Cache spacing — wider spacing lowers local cache density, which lowers the chance a pilferer that finds one cache is standing near several others.
Memory strength — lower memory means more caches go unrecovered, feeding more candidates into the germination pathway.
Pilferage pressure — raises the background rate at which any unattended cache is found and raided, whether remembered or already forgotten.

Seed tree Agouti Cache (remembered) Cache (forgotten) Germinated sapling