Learned aversion to soiled bedding in male mongolian gerbils

This study was designed to determine whether the conditioned aversion paradigm could be extended to aversion to soiled bedding in the male Mongolian gerbil. In Experiment 1, sixty subjects were exposed to a glass petri dish filed with soiled bedding placed in the center of a one-meter-square open field for two 5-min sessions 48 hours apart. Half of the subjects received an injection of lithium chloride immediately after session 1, while the rest received saline. The LiCl subjects learned to avoid the soiled bedding in session 2, as indicated by significantly longer latency to first approach and lower frequency of approach to the stimulus. Experiment 2 examined conditioned aversion to specific to soiled bedding. The research results demonstrate olfactory aversion of this type is possible in gerbils, and suggest that it may have an important influence on their social behavior.