RATS: AVOIDANCE AND ITS AFTERMATH

The preceding paragraphs are concerned with the approach to food. But wild rats, although they eventually sample everything within range, at first avoid an unfamiliar food, Or a familiar food in a new place. There are three aspects of the effect of neophobia on food consumption.
1.An environmental change may cause an interruption in feeding, even though the food is not changed or moved
2. A change in conditions at a feeding point may reduce the amount eaten at that point, without influencing eating elsewhere.
3.A new food can itself induce at least a transient avoidance; this must be distinguished from the avoidance developed as a result of eating a toxic food.

Neophobia wanes, as a rule, quite rapidly. If a new food becomes available, increasing amounts are eaten, until it may even be preferred to what was eaten before. When the amount of food is the less than the rats can eat, a further effect is observed; as neophobia is overcome, the time of eating may change also. Thompson studied rats living in natural conditions; some had been caught, individually marked and released.

The fact that a social interaction often suggested, nevertheless, that rats are co-operative animals, and band together to carry food to their nests. There is a persistent legend that eggs are taken In the hands of one rats which then lies on its back while a second rat drags it by the tail to cover. This belief should not be casually dismissed; rat do use their hands for grasping, and they do pull each others’ tails. It is not imposible that rats could learn, almost accidentally, to perform some such Trick. But the only authentic account of eggs-stealing by rats with supporting ohotographs shows the rats opoerating individually ; each pushes an egg along in front of it.