ABS Media Information

Failure to find aversive marking of toxic foods by Norway rats

It has long been known that rats mark foods and feeding sites that they are exploiting with residual cues that make those sites more attractive to other rats than unmarked foods and feeding sites. In the present series of experiments, we asked whether rats that had learned to avoid a food because they had become ill after eating it would mark that food in a way that caused other rats to avoid eating it. Somewhat surprisingly we found that residual cues left by rats in and around a food that they were avoiding eating, were just as attractive to other rats as cues deposited by rats that were eating the same food. Why rats do not seem to be able to signal their fellows to avoid an unprofitable potential feeding site, whereas other species can remains to be determined.

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