Behavioural mechanisms underlaying food aversion in guinea pigs
We analysed the mechanisms underlying behavioural food aversion of a plant defence (tannins) by guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) under the hypothesis that they can avoid ingesting these phenols by (a) directly monitoring their presence in their diet (unlearned aversion), by (b) using associat...
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | JOUR |
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| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_11303204_v9_n_p29_Lichtenstein |
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| Sumario: | We analysed the mechanisms underlying behavioural food aversion of a plant defence (tannins) by guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) under the hypothesis that they can avoid ingesting these phenols by (a) directly monitoring their presence in their diet (unlearned aversion), by (b) using associative learning, or by (c) a combination of both mechanisms. Tannins were used as an aversive unconditional stimulus, and vanilla and wintergreen flavours were used as conditional stimuli. Tests consisted of simultaneous presentations of two bottles containing different water solutions. In the first test, subjects were offered a choice of the two flavoured water solutions in order to assess initial preferences. Unlearned avoidance was tested in two tests using different tannin concentrations. After a conditioning period in which subjects were offered their preferred flavour paired with tannins and their less preferred flavour in water solutions on alternate days, four tests were conducted using the two flavoured solutions without tannins in order to test for associative learning. Guinea pigs showed an unlearned avoidance towards tannins presenting a stronger response towards the solutions with the higher concentration. Flavours that had been paired with tannins during the conditioning period were avoided suggesting associative learning. We propose that the discriminatory abilities showed by C. aperea in the laboratory are involved in the development of simple 'rules of thumb' in the natural environment. |
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