scholarly journals Reaching Out for Inaccessible Food Is a Potential Begging Signal in Cooperating Wild-Type Norway Rats, Rattus norvegicus

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas I. Paulsson ◽  
Michael Taborsky

Begging is widespread in juvenile animals. It typically induces helpful behaviours in parents and brood care helpers. However, begging is sometimes also shown by adults towards unrelated social partners. Adult Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) display a sequence of different behaviours in a reciprocal food provisioning task that have been interpreted as such signals of need. The first behaviour in this sequence represents reaching out for a food item the animal cannot obtain independently. This may reflect either an attempt to grasp the food object by itself, or a signal to the social partner communicating the need for help. To distinguish between these two possibilities, we tested in female wild-type Norway rats if the amount of reaching performed by a food-deprived rat changes with the presence/absence of food and a social partner. Focal rats displayed significantly more reaching behaviour, both in terms of number and total duration of events, when food and a potentially helpful partner were present compared to when either was missing. Our findings hence support the hypothesis that rats use reaching behaviour to signal need to social partners that can help them to obtain food.

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1874) ◽  
pp. 20180035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manon K. Schweinfurth ◽  
Michael Taborsky

Kin selection and reciprocity are two mechanisms underlying the evolution of cooperation, but the relative importance of kinship and reciprocity for decisions to cooperate are yet unclear for most cases of cooperation. Here, we experimentally tested the relative importance of relatedness and received cooperation for decisions to help a conspecific in wild-type Norway rats ( Rattus norvegicus ). Test rats provided more food to non-kin than to siblings, and they generally donated more food to previously helpful social partners than to those that had refused help. The rats thus applied reciprocal cooperation rules irrespective of relatedness, highlighting the importance of reciprocal help for cooperative interactions among both related and unrelated conspecifics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1939) ◽  
pp. 20202327
Author(s):  
Nina Gerber ◽  
Manon K. Schweinfurth ◽  
Michael Taborsky

Reciprocity can explain cooperative behaviour among non-kin, where individuals help others depending on their experience in previous interactions. Norway rats ( Rattus norvegicus ) cooperate reciprocally according to direct and generalized reciprocity. In a sequence of four consecutive experiments, we show that odour cues from a cooperating conspecific are sufficient to induce the altruistic help of rats in a food-exchange task. When rats were enabled to help a non-cooperative partner while receiving olfactory information from a rat helping a conspecific in a different room, they helped their non-cooperative partner as if it was a cooperative one. We further show that the cues inducing altruistic behaviour are released during the act of cooperation and do not depend on the identity of the cue provider. Remarkably, olfactory cues seem to be more important for cooperation decisions than experiencing a cooperative act per se . This suggests that rats may signal their cooperation propensity to social partners, which increases their chances to receive help in return.


2016 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annegret Börner ◽  
Rebecca Hjemdahl ◽  
Thomas Götz ◽  
Gillian R. Brown

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaakko Kiander ◽  
Pekka Sauramo ◽  
Hannu Tanninen

This article deals with Finnish incomes policy as a special type of political exchange between the social partners and the government. The continuity of this political exchange requires a common ground of values and trust. In the article, these prerequisites are characterized in terms of the concept of social capital. The article also emphasizes the importance of centrally negotiated incomes policy agreements as an important institutional framework within which the Finnish welfare state has evolved. Owing to the traditionally close relationship between centrally negotiated incomes policy agreements and welfare reforms, the end of centrally negotiated incomes policy agreements declared by one social partner – namely, the Confederation of Finnish Industries – is likely to affect not only the manner in which wages are negotiated in the future but also the tradition of political exchange between the social partners and the government. Cet article traite de la politique finlandaise des revenus comme d’un type particulier d’échange politique entre les partenaires sociaux et le gouvernement. La continuité de cet échange politique requiert une base commune de valeurs et de confiance. Dans cet article, ces conditions préalables sont caractérisées en recourant au concept de capital social. L'article souligne également l’importance de la négociation centralisée des accords sur la politique des revenus, en tant que cadre institutionnel important dans lequel se poursuit l’évolution de l’État-providence finlandais. En raison de la relation traditionnellement étroite entre les accords de politique des revenus issus d'une négociation centralisée, d’une part, et les réformes de l’État-providence, d’autre part, la fin de ces accords de politique des revenus issus d’une négociation centralisée, proclamée par un partenaire social – la Confédération des industries finlandaises –, devait affecter non seulement la manière dont les salaires seront négociés dans l’avenir, mais aussi la tradition de l’échange politique entre partenaires sociaux et gouvernement. Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich mit der finnischen Lohn- und Gehaltspolitik, die auf einer besonderen Form des politischen Austausches zwischen den Sozialpartnern und der Regierung beruht. Die Konti-nuität dieses politischen Austausches setzt eine Basis gemeinsamer Werte und des Vertrauens voraus, die wir als “Sozialkapital” bezeichnen. Ferner wird darauf hingewiesen, dass die zentral ausgehandelten Abkommen über die Lohn- und Gehaltspolitik einen wichtigen institutionellen Rahmen bilden, in dem sich der finnische Wohlfahrtsstaat entwickelt hat. Traditionell besteht in Finnland eine enge Beziehung zwischen zentral ausgehandelten Lohnabkommen und sozialen Reformen. Die Erklärung eines Sozialpartners – des finnischen Arbeitgeberverbands – keine zentralen Lohnabkommen mehr auszuhandeln, wird somit nicht nur einen Einfluss auf die Lohnverhandlungsmodalitäten haben, sondern auch auf die Tradition des politischen Austausches zwischen den Sozialpartnern und der Regierung.


2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 045-063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard H. Casey

The European Employment Strategy is now seven years old. Whilst its contribution to improving labour market performance has been evaluated, less attention has been paid to the manner in which the EES has worked, in particular the ways in which policy has been formulated and implemented. In particular, there has been little investigation of the extent to which one of the stated objectives of the strategy – the improved involvement of the social partners in the formulation and imple-mentation of policy – has been achieved. This paper argues that in many respects this objective has not been met. Even in countries where social partnership structures appear relatively well developed, the Luxembourg process has added little – in part because it is seen to be concerned with technical matters. Employment policy is ‘settled’ elsewhere. In addition, realisation of those elements of the strategy where social partner participation is most critical has often been frustrated by the lack of mechanisms to implement commitments made at the centre at places of work. Moreover, by subscribing to the strategy, social partners were also subscribing to a wider approach to economic policy – an approach that was scarcely compatible with the approach advocated by trade unions. Accordingly, the conclusion has to be that the Luxembourg process failed to develop social partnership. An exception might be the closer working together of the European-level social partner associations. However, their involvement in the strategy has been little noticed by their constituents, and it might even be argued to have encouraged elitism rather than to have promoted greater participation in policy-making.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey J Powell ◽  
Elizabeth Spelke

Previous research has demonstrated that preverbal infants have a preference for individuals who imitate their social partners over those who do not. It is unknown, however, if this preference is dependent upon infants’ inference that the imitation reflected an intentional response to the imitator’s social partner. The current experiment addresses this question by asking if infants only prefer individuals who copy their social partner to those who do not when these responding individuals had perceptual access to the partner’s initial behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, infants were more likely to reach for an imitator than a non-imitator when both had perceptual access to the movements of the social partner to whom they were responding, whereas preferential reaching to the imitator over the non-imitator did not differ from chance when the responders’ access to the partner’s initial behavior was blocked. However, the likelihood of reaching to the imitator did not reliably differ between the two conditions, so the experiment fell short of providing strong evidence that the imitator’s perceptual access to its social partner affects the elicitation of infants’ preferences. We discuss reasons for this potential weakness and ways to remedy it in future experiments.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 571-586
Author(s):  
Kimberly J Morgan

In recent decades, governments have made labour markets sites of immigration enforcement through employer sanctions and other measures. In some countries, unions and employers’ associations facilitate implementation of these initiatives, while in others they openly or tacitly resist cooperation. This paper explores these patterns of cooperation and resistance through analysis of six countries. The method used is qualitative comparative analysis, using primary and secondary sources that include newspaper coverage, government reports, union documents and scholarly accounts. The explanation centres on the degree of social partner embeddedness in government decision-making and economic management. In countries with institutionalized, coordinated relationships between the social partners and the state, this coordination extends to implementation of employers’ sanctions. In systems with less institutionalized cooperation, employers and unions are less likely to assist the immigration control objectives of state officials. These practices also affect migrants’ ability to live within a society, making them not only a form of immigration control, but also important for migrant wellbeing.


Behaviour ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Porter ◽  
Pierre Orgeur ◽  
Richard Bon ◽  
Lara Désiré

AbstractA series of experiments investigated the role of association and familiarity in the development of social recognition among lambs. In each experiment, lambs were tested successively with 2 different social partners. When separated from their mothers, lambs that were paired with a partner with which they had been housed for 17 or 5 days emitted fewer distress bleats than they did during tests with an unfamiliar lamb. However, this effect was only evident when the test with the unfamiliar partner preceded the test with the familiar partner. When lambs were first tested with an unfamiliar partner treated with the same artificial odorant that had previously been associated with members of their own group, they bleated more than they did during a second test with a partner whose odor was novel. This effect was not observed when the familiar- and novel-odor partners were encountered in the reverse order. Bleating frequencies by lambs paired with their twin did not differ reliably from those of lambs paired with a familiar non-twin. Nonetheless, there was a signficant correlation between the number of bleats by twins that were tested together. Overall, the results indicate that lambs become familiar with and recognize individuals (twins and non-twins) as a result of direct association. Lambs also discriminate between novel scents and artificial odorants associated with their familiar agemates, but such odors neither mask nor substitute effectively for lambs' individually recognizable phenotypes. Bleating frequency increases with the novelty of the social partner and of the test situation, and is therefore markedly affected by repeated testing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-117
Author(s):  
R. Gulevich ◽  
I. Oskina ◽  
O. Ilyina ◽  
Yu. Herbeck ◽  
I. Plyusnina ◽  
...  

The frequency of aa homozygous descendants was studied in crosses of Aa heterozygous Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus (Berkenhout, 1769)) parents selected for tame and aggressive behavior. First, Aa heterozygotes were obtained in crosses between tame homozygotes for the wild-type allele (AA) and aggressive homozygotes for the non-agouti allele (aa). The most tame and the most aggressive descendants were selected from the progeny of the Aa genotype by using the glove test. Then Aa rats were crossed among tame and among aggressive descendants, and the AA and Aa genotypes of grey descendants were identified by polymerase chain reactions (PCR). The segregation of descendants into the AA, Aa, and aa genotypes was cumulatively analyzed in five generations of selection with regard to the phenotypic manifestation of tame and aggressive behavior in their parents. The frequency of aa descendants in the progeny of mothers with low aggressive behavior scores was less than expected and less than in the progeny of mothers with high aggressive behavior scores.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Ilsøe

The discussion on the digitalisation of work has intensified in recent years. The literature points to two main trends accelerated by digitalisation – work automation that eliminates or changes job functions, and the creation of work without jobs via digital platforms. This article addresses the question as to how social partners define digitalisation of work and their perception of its consequences, while also looking at their recent responses to it. Drawing on interviews with unions and employers' organisations in Denmark, Sweden and Germany, it examines social partner initiatives in the unilateral, tripartite and bipartite arenas on various forms of neo-corporatist labour market regulation. The focus is on service work in the private sector, an area of the economy currently under pressure from both automation and the trend towards work without jobs. Whereas the social partners seem to be very active in the unilateral arena in all three countries, responses differ in the tripartite and bipartite arenas. The article concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the responses in the face of current digitalisation trends and existing models of labour market regulation.


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