ArticleScientific reports2024
Play partner preferences among groups of unfamiliar juvenile male rats.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Partner Choice and Context-Dependent Sex Differences in Rat Rough-and-Tumble Play.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
- To play or not to play? Effects of social isolation length and stimulus rat familiarity on social play engagement in three laboratory rat strains.Physiology & behavior · 2025Article
- Groups of familiar male rats form unstable partner preferences when play fighting during the juvenile period.iScience · 2025Article
- Juvenile male rats form preferences based on strain when playing in groups but not in pairs.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Joint Simon effect in rats: Validation across two strains and exploratory analysis of the influence of familiarity.PloS one · 2025Article
- The neurobiology of play: a narrative review of evidence from mice and humans for advancing neurorehabilitation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Like many mammals, as juveniles, rats engage in play fighting, which in the laboratory is typically studied in dyads, and consequently, it is the researcher who determines a rat's play partner. In real-life conditions, a rat would have many partners with whom to play. In a previous study, we found that rats do prefer to play with some individuals more than others, and surprisingly, when given the choice, unfamiliar partners are preferred to familiar ones. In this study, we assessed partner choice when all the available partners are strangers. Eight groups of six unfamiliar juvenile male rats were observed for 10 min play trials. One of the six in each group was selected as the 'focal' rat and his play towards, and received by, the others were scored. Social networks revealed that five of the eight groups formed preferences, with preferred partners also engaging in more play with the focal rat. The mechanism by which these preferences were formed remains to be determined, but it seems that there are individual differences, potentially in the amount and style of play, that allow an individual to select the most suitable partner from a group of strangers.
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