Socially transmitted food preferences can be used to study long-term memory in rats

Immediately after a recently fed rodentdemonstrator interacts with a conspecificobserver, the observer shows a substantially enhanced preference for whatever food its demonstrator ate. Here we show that (1) influence of a single, 30-min interaction with a demonstrator on an observer’s food preference lasts for at least 1 month, and (2) observers interacting on 2 successive days with a demonstrator fed a different diet on each day show …