Rats play tit-for-tat instead of integrating social experience over multiple interactions.

Schweinfurth, Manon K; Taborsky, Michael (2020). Rats play tit-for-tat instead of integrating social experience over multiple interactions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences, 287(1918), p. 20192423. The Royal Society 10.1098/rspb.2019.2423

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Theoretical models of cooperation typically assume that agents use simple rules based on last encounters, such as 'tit-for-tat', to reciprocate help. By contrast, empiricists generally suppose that animals integrate multiple experiences over longer timespans. Here, we compared these two alternative hypotheses by exposing Norway rats to partners that cooperated on three consecutive days but failed to cooperate on the fourth day, and to partners that did the exact opposite. In additional controls, focal rats experienced cooperating and defecting partners only once. In a bar-pulling setup, focal rats based their decision to provide partners with food on last encounters instead of overall cooperation levels. To check whether this might be owing to a lack of memory capacity, we tested whether rats remember the outcome of encounters that had happened three days before. Cooperation was not diminished by the intermediate time interval. We conclude that rats reciprocate help mainly based on most recent encounters instead of integrating social experience over longer timespans.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Behavioural Ecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)

UniBE Contributor:

Schweinfurth, Manon Karin, Taborsky, Michael

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
500 Science > 590 Animals (Zoology)

ISSN:

1471-2954

Publisher:

The Royal Society

Language:

English

Submitter:

Anja Ebeling

Date Deposited:

17 Jul 2023 15:52

Last Modified:

23 Jul 2023 02:33

Publisher DOI:

10.1098/rspb.2019.2423

PubMed ID:

31937222

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Rattus norvegicus cooperation food sharing memory reciprocity tit-for-tat

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/184894

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/184894

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