ArticlePLoS biology2020
The smell of hunger: Norway rats provision social partners based on odour cues of need.
Article in PLoS biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Prosocial Behavior toward Others in Negative State.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Breastfeeding, bonding, and olfaction: unlocking the potential of mother-infant odour exchange.EBioMedicine · 2026Review
- Experimental evidence for social learning in semi-natural, wild-type Norway rats.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Does Knowledge of the Partner's Need Affect Food Sharing in Tufted Capuchin Monkeys?American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Norway rats recruit cooperation partners based on previous receipt of help while disregarding kinship.iScience · 2024Article
- Assessment of help value affects reciprocation in Norway rats.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Family first! Influence of parental investment in Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) prosocial choices.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- When deciding to cooperate by direct reciprocity, Norway rats sometimes benefit from olfactory competence and seem not impaired by insufficient cognitive abilities.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Making a case for the free exploratory paradigm: animal welfare-friendly assays that enhance heterozygosity and ecological validity.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Reciprocal processes of sensory perception and social bonding: an integrated social-sensory framework of social behavior.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2022Review
- Recent trends in the chromatographic analysis of volatile flavor and fragrance compounds: Annual review 2020.Analytical science advances · 2021Review
- Reaching Out for Inaccessible Food Is a Potential Begging Signal in Cooperating Wild-Type Norway Rats,Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The smell of cooperation: rats increase helpful behaviour when receiving odour cues of a conspecific performing a cooperative task.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Reciprocity: Different behavioural strategies, cognitive mechanisms and psychological processes.Learning & behavior · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When individuals exchange helpful acts reciprocally, increasing the benefit of the receiver can enhance its propensity to return a favour, as pay-offs are typically correlated in iterated interactions. Therefore, reciprocally cooperating animals should consider the relative benefit for the receiver when deciding to help a conspecific. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) exchange food reciprocally and thereby take into account both the cost of helping and the potential benefit to the receiver. By using a variant of the sequential iterated prisoner's dilemma paradigm, we show that rats may determine the need of another individual by olfactory cues alone. In an experimental food-exchange task, test subjects were provided with odour cues from hungry or satiated conspecifics located in a different room. Our results show that wild-type Norway rats provide help to a stooge quicker when they receive odour cues from a hungry rather than from a satiated conspecific. Using chemical analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we identify seven volatile organic compounds that differ in their abundance between hungry and satiated rats. Combined, this "smell of hunger" can apparently serve as a reliable cue of need in reciprocal cooperation, which supports the hypothesis of honest signalling.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.