Socially mediated attenuation of taste-aversion learning in Norway rats: Preventing development of “food phobias”

After interacting with rat demonstrators that had eaten a novel, palatable diet, many observer rats exhibited either attenuation or total blockade of their subsequent acquisition of a lithium-chloride-induced aversion to that diet. In natural circumstances, such social attenuation of aversion learning could prevent new recruits to a population (weanlings or recent immigrants) from learning maladaptive aversions (“food phobias”) to tainted or spoiled samples of normally safe foods that others of their social group were eating.