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Conditioned Taste Aversion

Conditioned Taste Aversion

Conditioned taste aversion, also known as sauce béarnaise syndrome, is a phenomenon in which an individual develops an aversion to a certain food taste following a negative experience, typically illness. This form of aversion is a type of classical conditioning in which the taste of the food (conditioned stimulus, CS) is associated with the experience of illness (unconditioned stimulus, UCS).
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Predator-Prey Interactions

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Frequency-dependent Selection

Frequency-dependent Selection

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.

Instinctive Drift

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Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 3, 2026

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning

Published on: October 15, 2021

Illness-dependent conditioned prey avoidance in an amphibian.

Eric S K To¹, Frédéric Laberge¹

¹Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1.

Behavioural Processes

|February 1, 2014

Summary

This study shows that the fire-bellied toad can learn to avoid toxic prey after experiencing illness. This conditioned taste avoidance (CTA) is not limited to mammals and birds.

Keywords:

Amphibians Avoidance learning Illness behavior Taste

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Area of Science:

Behavioral Ecology
Neuroscience
Vertebrate Zoology

Background:

Conditioned taste avoidance (CTA) is a crucial survival mechanism.
Previous research on CTA in amphibians yielded inconsistent findings.
Clarifying CTA in amphibians is vital for understanding its evolutionary history.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the presence and characteristics of CTA in the fire-bellied toad (Bombina orientalis).
To determine if amphibians can develop avoidance of a novel food after illness or unpalatability.
To contribute to the understanding of the phylogenetic distribution of CTA.

Main Methods:

Mealworms, a novel food, were coated with either 2% HCl (unpalatable) or 3% CuSO4 (nauseating).
Bombina orientalis subjects consumed the treated mealworms.
Avoidance behavior and signs of illness were recorded post-consumption.

Main Results:

Consumption of CuSO4-treated mealworms induced significant prey avoidance in toads.
HCl-treated mealworms resulted in short-lived aversive reactions but not lasting avoidance.
Avoidance was specific to mealworms; normal prey (crickets) were not rejected.

Conclusions:

The fire-bellied toad exhibits conditioned taste avoidance following illness.
CTA is not exclusive to amniote vertebrates, extending to amphibians.
This finding has significant implications for the evolutionary understanding of learned aversions.