Lai Wen-Sung, Yu Wei-Chun, Liu Ching-Yi, Kuo Ming-Tsung, Huang Ching-Hsun
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Physiol Behav. 2014 Apr 10;128:202-11. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2014.01.029. Epub 2014 Feb 11.
Social eavesdropping is a special type of social learning and it is defined as the act of extracting information from social interactions between conspecifics. Social eavesdropping has advantages in information gathering and has attracted increasing attention. Emerging studies on social eavesdropping have been reported in several species, but the lack of suitable and manipulable laboratory rodent models remains a challenge to the study of the underlying mechanisms of social eavesdropping. The aim of this study was to take advantage of golden hamsters and their agonistic behaviors to develop a new laboratory method to study social eavesdropping. Male hamsters with or without a defeat experience were used as bystanders and were exposed to either a fighting interaction or a neutral encounter between two male demonstrators in a social learning chamber for a 3-day social learning. The behavioral responses of the bystanders toward observed demonstrators were tested in a U-shaped maze before and after the 3-day social learning. We found that (1) bystanders were attracted to the winning demonstrators in both short-term and long-term tests in experiment 1; (2) bystanders with a brief defeat experience displayed the opposite behavioral pattern and avoided approaching the winning demonstrator in experiment 2. It is evident that these hamsters acquired information about the relative qualities and dominance of the demonstrators and behaved differently toward different conspecifics afterward. Collectively, male hamsters are capable of social eavesdropping and prior experience of defeat has a significant impact on their consequent behaviors. Our newly developed behavioral method offers several advantages and it is useful for the study of social eavesdropping and its underlying mechanisms.
社会窃听是一种特殊类型的社会学习，它被定义为从同种个体之间的社会互动中提取信息的行为。社会窃听在信息收集方面具有优势，并已引起越来越多的关注。关于社会窃听的新兴研究已在多个物种中报道，但缺乏合适且可操控的实验室啮齿动物模型仍然是研究社会窃听潜在机制的一个挑战。本研究的目的是利用金黄地鼠及其攻击行为来开发一种新的实验室方法以研究社会窃听。有或没有失败经历的雄性地鼠被用作旁观者，并在社会学习室中接触两只雄性示范者之间的战斗互动或中性相遇，进行为期3天的社会学习。在为期3天的社会学习前后，在U形迷宫中测试旁观者对观察到的示范者的行为反应。我们发现：（1）在实验1的短期和长期测试中，旁观者都被获胜的示范者所吸引；（2）在实验2中，有短暂失败经历的旁观者表现出相反的行为模式，避免接近获胜的示范者。显然，这些地鼠获取了有关示范者相对品质和优势的信息，并且此后对不同的同种个体表现出不同的行为。总体而言，雄性地鼠有能力进行社会窃听，失败的先前经历对其随后的行为有重大影响。我们新开发的行为方法具有多个优点，对研究社会窃听及其潜在机制很有用。
