The Component of Feeding Behavior

Social Stimuli.
The direction of a wild rat’s movements as it goes to eat may also be influence by other rats. In this book the word social is used for any such effect

Barnett & Spencer watched colonies of wild rats when they began to feed in the evening. The food was wheat grains. Usually, one particular member of the colony emerged first, and carried a mouthful of grains back to its nest; the nest was shared with other rats, and these came out soon after the return of the pioneer rat. The possible importance of such individual’s appearance in two kinds of situation. In one, the rats were deprived of food for one or two days, and then food was replaced in the usual containers. The first rat to find the food was the pioneer, and the return of this rat to the nest with food led to a rapid and unanimous sortie by the rest of the colony. This occurred, as one would expect, especially when the rats had had previous experience of a fast followed by a return of food .

In second kinds experiment , food for instance, cabbage, put in the enclosure was of kind only rarely available to the rats. The first rat to emerge at once took a cabbage leaf and returned with it to the nest. This was followed by general activity, including excursions for additional leaves and attempts to wrest fragments of leaf from other rats.

The habit of taking food to the nest, end of eating it under cover, , had other indirect social effects. Grains dropped from a rat’s mouth, as a preliminary to eating them one by one , were often taken by other rats. If a rat had been eating flour, residues on its face or hands were licked off by other rats, especially young one

The rats had probably come to associate certain behavior of other rats, or certain appearances or odors , with the presence of food. The fact that a social interaction is involved is incidental.