Utilization by Norway rats (R. norvegicus) of multiple messages concerning distant foods

Three experiments with 360 Long-Evans rats examined whether an individual rat remaining in its burrow and interacting with a succession of conspecifics returning from foraging trips could collect information concerning the range of foods the returning foragers have exploited. Results indicate that a naive S interacting with a series of conspecifics, each of which had previously eaten a distinctive diet, (a) extracted information from each conspecific sufficient to permit identification of the diet that individual had eaten, (b) distinctively encoded that information, (c) stored it for at least 12 hrs, and (d) retrieved and used the stored information to orient its own feeding behavior. Results extend the findings of the author and S. W. Wigmore (1983) of a capacity of rats to extract sufficient olfactory information from an individual conspecific to permit identification of the diet that individual has previously eaten. (7 ref)