Abstract
Weanling rat pups, both wild and domesticated, prefer to ingest a relatively unpalatable diet that the adult members of their colony have been trained to eat rather than a more palatable alternative diet that the adults of their colony have been trained to avoid (Bronstein, Levine, & Marcus, 1975; Capretta & Rawls, 1974; Galef, 1977; Galef & Clark, 1971, 1972). I have suggested previously that this ability of rats to transmit acquired food preferences socially from individual to individual might be particularly adaptive when the transmitter of the food preference is an adult and the recipient of the transmission a weanling juvenile (Galef, 1976, 1977; Galef & Clark, 1971), Young rats seeking their first meals of solid food in the general environment are relatively ignorant of the location and identity of nutritious food stuffs and must seek out these foods at a time when they are particularly vulnerable to environmental stress. Adults rearing young have learned the identity and location of necessary, safe foods during their own exploration in the area in which they reproduce. It would clearly be advantageous to the young (and, hence, to the
Published Version
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