Hungry rats' following of conspecifics to food depends on the diets eaten by potential leaders

Rats, Rattus norvegicus, familiar with maze procedures reliably followed conspecific leaders in a maze. Rats trained to follow in a maze followed leaders that had eaten a food known to the follower to be safe, with higher probability than they followed leaders that had eaten a food known to the follower to be poisonous. Thus, rats have the capacity both to follow conspecifics to feeding sites and to choose conspecifics to follow on the basis of the desirability of the foods those conspecifics have been eating. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that aggregation sites of rats in natural environments might serve as information centres where unsuccessful, foragers could select more successful colony-mates to follow to food.