The smell of hunger: Norway rats provision social partners based on odour cues of need.

Autor: Karin Schneeberger, Gregory Röder, Michael Taborsky
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS Biology, Vol 18, Iss 3, p e3000628 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000628
Popis: When individuals exchange helpful acts reciprocally, increasing the benefit of the receiver can enhance its propensity to return a favour, as pay-offs are typically correlated in iterated interactions. Therefore, reciprocally cooperating animals should consider the relative benefit for the receiver when deciding to help a conspecific. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) exchange food reciprocally and thereby take into account both the cost of helping and the potential benefit to the receiver. By using a variant of the sequential iterated prisoner's dilemma paradigm, we show that rats may determine the need of another individual by olfactory cues alone. In an experimental food-exchange task, test subjects were provided with odour cues from hungry or satiated conspecifics located in a different room. Our results show that wild-type Norway rats provide help to a stooge quicker when they receive odour cues from a hungry rather than from a satiated conspecific. Using chemical analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we identify seven volatile organic compounds that differ in their abundance between hungry and satiated rats. Combined, this "smell of hunger" can apparently serve as a reliable cue of need in reciprocal cooperation, which supports the hypothesis of honest signalling.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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