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When deciding to cooperate by direct reciprocity, Norway rats sometimes benefit from olfactory competence and seem not impaired by insufficient cognitive abilities

When deciding to cooperate by direct reciprocity, Norway rats sometimes benefit from olfactory... Direct reciprocity requires the ability to recognize and memorize social partners, and to remember their previous actions. ‘Insufficient cognitive abilities’ have been assumed to potentially impair the ability to cooperate by direct reciprocity. Here we compare the propensity of rats to use direct reciprocity with their ability to memorize and recognize sensory cues in a non-social task. Female rats enriched in one of three sensory modalities (visual, olfactory or auditory) performed better in a learning task when they were tested with the specific sensory modality in which they have been enriched. For the cooperation test, during three subsequent reciprocity experiments the rats could provide two partners differing in their previous helpfulness with food. Individuals performing better in the non-social learning task that involved olfactory cues applied direct reciprocity more successfully in one experiment. However, in the experiment preventing visual cues and physical contact, rats applied direct reciprocity rules irrespective of their performance in the learning task with olfactory cues. This indicates that an enhanced olfactory recognition ability, despite being beneficial, is not a prerequisite for the rats’ ability to cooperate by direct reciprocity. This might suggest that when rats have all types of information about their social partner, individuals may apply other criteria than the reciprocity decision rule when determining how much help to provide, as for instance coercion. Interestingly, when all individuals are constrained to mostly rely on olfactory memory, individuals apply direct reciprocity independently of their ability to memorize olfactory cues in a non-social context. ‘Insufficient cognitive abilities’ may thus not be the true reason when direct reciprocity is not observed. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Animal Cognition Springer Journals

When deciding to cooperate by direct reciprocity, Norway rats sometimes benefit from olfactory competence and seem not impaired by insufficient cognitive abilities

Dolivo, Vassilissa; Engqvist, Leif; Taborsky, Michael
Animal Cognition , Volume OnlineFirst – Mar 3, 2023
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Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
ISSN
1435-9448
eISSN
1435-9456
DOI
10.1007/s10071-023-01754-5
Publisher site
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Abstract

Direct reciprocity requires the ability to recognize and memorize social partners, and to remember their previous actions. ‘Insufficient cognitive abilities’ have been assumed to potentially impair the ability to cooperate by direct reciprocity. Here we compare the propensity of rats to use direct reciprocity with their ability to memorize and recognize sensory cues in a non-social task. Female rats enriched in one of three sensory modalities (visual, olfactory or auditory) performed better in a learning task when they were tested with the specific sensory modality in which they have been enriched. For the cooperation test, during three subsequent reciprocity experiments the rats could provide two partners differing in their previous helpfulness with food. Individuals performing better in the non-social learning task that involved olfactory cues applied direct reciprocity more successfully in one experiment. However, in the experiment preventing visual cues and physical contact, rats applied direct reciprocity rules irrespective of their performance in the learning task with olfactory cues. This indicates that an enhanced olfactory recognition ability, despite being beneficial, is not a prerequisite for the rats’ ability to cooperate by direct reciprocity. This might suggest that when rats have all types of information about their social partner, individuals may apply other criteria than the reciprocity decision rule when determining how much help to provide, as for instance coercion. Interestingly, when all individuals are constrained to mostly rely on olfactory memory, individuals apply direct reciprocity independently of their ability to memorize olfactory cues in a non-social context. ‘Insufficient cognitive abilities’ may thus not be the true reason when direct reciprocity is not observed.

Journal

Animal Cognition – Springer Journals

Published: Mar 3, 2023

Keywords: Direct reciprocity; Learning; Cognition; Sensory cues; Altruism; Norway rats

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