TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schneeberger, Karin
A1  - Röder, Gregory
A1  - Taborsky, Michael
T1  - The smell of hunger
T2  - PLoS biology
N2  - When individuals exchange helpful acts reciprocally, increasing the benefit of the receiver can enhance its propensity to return a favour, as pay-offs are typically correlated in iterated interactions. Therefore, reciprocally cooperating animals should consider the relative benefit for the receiver when deciding to help a conspecific. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) exchange food reciprocally and thereby take into account both the cost of helping and the potential benefit to the receiver. By using a variant of the sequential iterated prisoner's dilemma paradigm, we show that rats may determine the need of another individual by olfactory cues alone. In an experimental food-exchange task, test subjects were provided with odour cues from hungry or satiated conspecifics located in a different room. Our results show that wild-type Norway rats provide help to a stooge quicker when they receive odour cues from a hungry rather than from a satiated conspecific. Using chemical analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we identify seven volatile organic compounds that differ in their abundance between hungry and satiated rats. Combined, this "smell of hunger" can apparently serve as a reliable cue of need in reciprocal cooperation, which supports the hypothesis of honest signalling.
Y1  - 2020
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/60173
SN  - 1544-9173
SN  - 1545-7885
VL  - 18
IS  - 3
PB  - PLoS
CY  - San Fransisco
ER  -