An adaptationist perspective on social learning, social feeding, and social foraging in Norway rats.

This chapter reviews data collected in my laboratory since 1983. It is more explicitly Darwinian in its approach than is usually the case in discussions of behavior acquisition by animals. First, in a brief introduction, I discuss my view of the relationship between the study of social learning in animals and what Lewontin and Gould have referred to, albeit unsympathetically, as the "adaptationist program" (Gould & Lewontin, 1979; Lewontin, 1978). In a second, longer section, I describe in some detail recently completed laboratory analyses of one type of social learning: olfactory communication of information about foods among Norway rats. Last, I discuss the possible implications of our laboratory findings for understanding the ways in which Norway rats may find food and avoid poisons In their natural habitat. Thus, in this chapter, analytic laboratory studies of the causes of behavior are sandwiched between an adaptationist introduction and adaptationist extrapolations to more evolutionarily relevant situations. This organization reflects the way I think about my laboratory research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)