Abstract
Imagine yourself having a conversation with a friend, and he starts yawning. You think, “My friend is getting bored!” Immediately, you try to be more enthusiastic or … you shorten the conversation. Now imagine a bird in the wild that suddenly hears an alarm call from another bird. What does he do? Most likely, his reaction will be to quickly escape to a safe place. These types of situations, where one animal (including humans) uses the behavior of others to guide his or her own behavior, are constantly happening in our daily lives. Importantly, these behaviors provide a number of advantages that are crucial for survival, like protection against threats. But how do the defense behaviors displayed by one individual who directly detects a threat influence the defense behaviors of others who are unaware of it? And what kind of signals are being used? This is exactly what we are tackling here! And we found out that an important cue is … silence!
Highlights
Imagine you are swimming in the sea on a warm sunny day, immersed in your thoughts, when suddenly a group of people starts screaming and swimming kids.frontiersin.org
We needed to expose an individual to an unpleasant event that triggered a defense response that could be detected by others
On Day 4, we placed both rats together in the social box, and we looked at their behavior when we played the tone
Summary
Imagine you are swimming in the sea on a warm sunny day, immersed in your thoughts, when suddenly a group of people starts screaming and swimming kids.frontiersin.org. We predict that you interpreted the screaming and swimming behavior of the group as a sign of danger This triggered your own defense response which, most likely, was to start swimming as fast as you could to the shore. If the screaming and swimming behavior of the group had not triggered a previous defense response, you would only have detected the shark once it was very close, putting your life in danger. Let us go back to the first example, when the group of people detected the shark in the water and started screaming and swimming to escape the shark. You used these defense responses as a threat warning signal, triggering your own escape. The million-dollar question is: how do the defense behaviors displayed by someone that detects a threat influence the defense behaviors of an observer kids.frontiersin.org that has not detected the threat directly? What exactly is the information from the threat-detecting person that the observer is using? Could this information be visual or auditory? Or olfactory? Or tactile?
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