Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 28, 2026
10:29
A Complex Diving-For-Food Task to Investigate Social Organization and Interactions in Rats
Published on: May 8, 2021
3.8K
Foraging by rats: Intuitions, models, data
1Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA.
Behavioural Processes
|June 5, 2014
Abstract:
Rats R. norvegicus were trained to press levers to accumulate food at distant sites. The size of the hoard increased with the distance to the site, but did not vary when the rats had to run uphill or downhill to get it. Persistence in a patch depended on the richness of the alternative patch. Optimality models were developed and modified in light of these data.
Related Concept Videos
00:48Optimal Foraging
11.8K
How animals obtain and eat their food is called foraging behavior. Foraging can include searching for plants and hunting for prey and depends on the species and environment.
11.8K
01:05Instinctive Drift
1.5K
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...
1.5K