Cache pilferage in red-rumped agoutis (<i>Dasyprocta leporina</i>) (Rodentia)

Food hoarding is the handling of food to conserve it for future use, and food hoarding animals have the capacity to control the availability of food in space and time (Smith & Reichman 1984; Vanderwall 1990).The benefits derived from this control include an improved individual probability of survival during periods of food scarcity, optimized foraging and feeding, improved foraging for limited resources, and pro-vision of a continuous flow of food to offspring during the reproductive season (reviewed by Vanderwall 1990).Inter-and intra-specific cache pilfering frequently reduces the cache resources of food hoarders, and there is evidence that the impact of cache pilfering can be impressive (Vanderwall & Jenkins 2003).As a consequence, food hoarders have different behavioral strategies to minimize