Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:41:32.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - Reciprocal cooperation – Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) as an example

from Part III - Social Cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2021

By
Manon K. Schweinfurth
Edited by
Allison B. Kaufman ,
Josep Call  and
James C. Kaufman
Allison B. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Josep Call
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Get access

Summary

Many animals cooperate even with unrelated individuals in various contexts, like providing food or allogrooming others. One possibility to explain the evolution of such apparently altruistic behaviour is reciprocity. In reciprocal cooperative interactions, individuals help those partners that have been previously cooperative and therefore exchange favours. This conditional help follows rules like “I help you because you helped me.” These rules are often assumed to be so cognitively demanding that they may be limited to humans. In this chapter, I will shed light on the cognitive underpinnings of reciprocal cooperation by reviewing work on one of the yet best-studied animal in this research area, the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus). Various studies have demonstrated that Norway rats reciprocally exchange different goods and services. They most likely form attitudes toward social partners that are based on the cooperation level of the last encounter, which they remember over long time spans. Cooperation decisions based on attitudes appear cognitively less complex than calculations of received and given favors. Thus, reciprocal cooperation based on this cognitive mechanism might be in fact more widespread among nonhuman animals than commonly believed.

Keywords

Norway ratscooperationreciprocityexchangehelp
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Animal Cognition , pp. 343 - 361
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, R. D. (1987). The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: AldineTransaction.Google Scholar
Amici, F., Aureli, F., Mundry, R., Amaro, A. S., Barroso, A. M., Ferretti, J., & Call, J. (2014). Calculated reciprocity? A comparative test with six primate species. Primates, 55(3), 447–457.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R. & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390–1396.Google Scholar
Barnett, S. A. (1963). The Rat: A Study in Behavior. New Jersey: AldineTransaction.Google Scholar
Barnett, S. A. & Spencer, M. M. (1951). Feeding, social behaviour and interspecific competition in wild rats. Behaviour, 3(3), 229–242.Google Scholar
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science, 334, 1427–1430.Google Scholar
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Rodgers, D. A., Bernardez Sarria, M. S., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2014). Pro-social behavior in rats is modulated by social experience. eLife, e01385–01385.Google Scholar
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Shan, H., Molasky, N. M. R., Murray, T. M., Williams, J. Z., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2016). Anxiolytic treatment impairs helping behavior in rats. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 850.Google Scholar
Berdoy, M. & Smith, P. (1993). Arms race and rat race: Adaptations against poisoning in the brown rat. Ecological Reviews, 48, 215–228.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (2011). A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1989). The evolution of indirect reciprocity. Social Networks, 11, 213–236.Google Scholar
Brenes, J. C. & Fornaguera, J. (2008). Effects of environmental enrichment and social isolation on sucrose consumption and preference: Associations with depressive-like behavior and ventral striatum dopamine. Neuroscience Letters, 436, 278–282.Google Scholar
Brosnan, S. F. & de Waal, F. B. M. (2002). A proximate perspective on reciprocal altruism. Human Nature, 13(1), 129–152.Google Scholar
Brudzynski, S. M. (2009). Communication of adult rats by ultrasonic vocalization: Biological, sociobiological, and neuroscience approaches. The Neurobiology of Social Behavior, 50(1), 43–50.Google Scholar
Burkart, J. M. & van Schaik, C. P. (2013). Group service in macaques (Macaca fuscata), capuchins (Cebus apella) and marmosets (Callithrix jacchus): A comparative approach to identifying proactive prosocial motivations. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 127(2), 212–225.Google Scholar
Carter, G. G. (2014). The reciprocity controversy. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 1(3), 368–386.Google Scholar
Clements, K. C. & Stephens, D. W. (1995). Testing models of non-kin cooperation: Mutualism and the prisoner’s dilemma. Animal Behaviour, 50(2), 527–535.Google Scholar
Clutton-Brock, T. (2009). Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies. Nature, 462(7269), 51–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colin, C. & Desor, D. (1986). Differenciations comportementales dans des groupes de rats soumis a une difficulte d’acces de la nourriture. Behavioral Processes, 13, 85–100.Google Scholar
Cox, L. & Tamara Montrose, V. (2016). Quantity discrimination in domestic rats, Rattus norvegicus. Animals, 6, 46.Google Scholar
Cronin, K. A., Schroeder, K. K. E., & Snowdon, C. T. (2010). Prosocial behaviour emerges independent of reciprocity in cottontop tamarins. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1701), 3845–3851.Google Scholar
Crystal, J. D. (2018). Comparative cognition: Rats pay back quid pro quo. Current Biology, 28(4), 153–155.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origins of Species. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Davis, H. & Bradford, S. A. (1986). Counting behavior by rats in a simulated natural environment. Ethology, 73(4), 265–280.Google Scholar
Dolivo, V. & Taborsky, M. (2015a). Cooperation among Norway rats: The importance of visual cues for reciprocal cooperation, and the role of coercion. Ethology, 121, 1071–1080.Google Scholar
Dolivo, V. & Taborsky, M. (2015b). Norway rats reciprocate help according to the quality of help they received. Biology Letters, 11, 20140959.Google Scholar
`Dolivo, V., Rutte, C., & Taborsky, M. (2016). Ultimate and proximate mechanisms of reciprocal altruism in rats. Learning & Behavior, 44, 223–226.Google Scholar
Dugatkin, L. A. (1997). Cooperation among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gerber, N., Schweinfurth, M. K., & Taborsky, M. (2020). The smell of cooperation: Rats increase helpful behaviour when receiving odour cues of a conspecific performing a cooperative task. Procedures of the Royal Society B, 287, 20202327.Google Scholar
Gheusi, G., Goodall, G., & Dantzer, R. (1997). Individually distinctive odours represent individual conspecifics in rats. Animal Behaviour, 53(5), 935–944.Google Scholar
Grasmuck, V. & Desor, D. (2002). Behavioural differentiation of rats confronted to a complex diving-for-food situation. Behavioural Processes, 58(1–2), 67–77.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1–16.Google Scholar
Hammerstein, P. (2003). Why Is Reciprocity so Rare in Social Animals? In Hammerstein, P. (Ed.), Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation (pp. 83–93). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hemelrijk, C. K. (1994). Support for being groomed in long-tailed macaques, Macaca fascicularis. Animal Behaviour, 48, 479–481.Google Scholar
Hernandez-Lallement, J., van Wingerden, M., Marx, C., Srejic, M., & Kalenscher, T. (2015). Rats prefer mutual rewards in a prosocial choice task. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8, 443.Google Scholar
Hopp, S. L., Owren, M. J., & Marion, J. R. (1985). Olfactory discrimination of individual littermates in rats (Rattus norvegicus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 99(2), 248–251.Google Scholar
Horn, L., Scheer, C., Bugnyar, T., & Massen, J. J. M. (2016). Proactive prosociality in a cooperatively breeding corvid, the azure-winged magpie (Cyanopica cyana). Biology Letters, 12(10), 20160649.Google Scholar
House, B., Henrich, J., Sarnecka, B., & Silk, J. B. (2013). The development of contingent reciprocity in children. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2), 86–93.Google Scholar
Hurst, J., Barnard, C. J., Nevison, C. M., & West, C. D. (1997). Housing and welfare in laboratory rats: Welfare implications of isolation and social contact among caged males. Animal Welfare, 6, 329–347.Google Scholar
Krafft, B., Colin, C., & Peignot, P. (1994). Diving-for-food: A new model to assess social roles in a group of laboratory rats. Ethology, 96, 11–23.Google Scholar
Krause, J. & Ruxton, G. D. (2002). Living in Groups. Oxford: Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution.Google Scholar
Li, G. R. & Wood, R. I. (2017). Male rats play a repeated donation game. Physiology and Behavior, 174, 95–103.Google Scholar
Littman, R. A., Lanski, L. M., & Rhine, R. J. (1954). Studies of individual and paired interactional problem solving behavior of rats (Mus norvegicus albinus). Behaviour, 7(2/3), 189–206.Google Scholar
Łopuch, S. & Popik, P. (2011). Cooperative behavior of laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) in an instrumental task. Behaviour, 125(2), 250–253.Google Scholar
MacDonald, D. W., Mathews, F., & Berdoy, M. (1999). The Behaviour and Ecology of Rattus norvegicus: From Opportunism to Kamikaze Tendencies. In Singleton, Grant R. & Hinds, Lyn A. (Eds.), Ecologically-Based Management of Rodent Pests (pp. 49–80), Melbourne: Brown Prior Anderson.Google Scholar
Márquez, C., Rennie, S. M., Costa, D. F., & Moita, M. M. (2015). Prosocial choice in rats depends on food-seeking behavior displayed by recipients. Current Biology, 25(13), 1736–1745.Google Scholar
Marshall-Pescini, S., Dale, R., Quervel-Chaumette, M., & Range, F. (2016). Critical issues in experimental studies of prosociality in non-human species. Animal Cognition, 19(4), 679–705.Google Scholar
Massen, J. J. M., van den Berg, L. M., Spruijt, B. M., & Sterck, E. H. M. (2010). Generous leaders and selfish underdogs: Pro-sociality in despotic macaques. PLoS One, 5(3), e9734.Google Scholar
Meerburg, B. G., Singleton, G. R., & Leirs, H. (2009). The year of the rat ends: Time to fight hunger! Pest Management Science, 65(4), 351–352.Google Scholar
Munn, N. L. (1950). Handbook of Psychological Research on the Rat. Cambridge: The Riverside Press Cambridge.Google Scholar
Noë, R. & Hammerstein, P. (1995). Biological markets. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 10(8), 336–339.Google Scholar
Partan, S. R. & Marler, P. (2005). Issues in the classification of multimodal communication signals. The American Naturalist, 166(2), 231–245.Google Scholar
Prusky, G. T., Harker, K. T., Douglas, R. M., & Whishaw, I. Q. (2002). Variation in visual acuity within pigmented, and between pigmented and albino rat strains. Behavioural Brain Research, 136, 339–348.Google Scholar
Puckett, E. E., Park, J., Combs, M., Blum, M. J., Bryant, J. E., Caccone, A., … Munshi-South, J. (2016). Global population divergence and admixture of the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 283(1841), 20161762.Google Scholar
Quervel-Chaumette, M., Dale, R., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Range, F. (2015). Familiarity affects other-regarding preferences in pet dogs. Scientific Reports, 5, 18102.Google Scholar
Ramseyer, A., Pelé, M., Dufour, V., Chauvin, C., & Thierry, B. (2006). Accepting loss: The temporal limits of reciprocity in brown capuchin monkeys. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273(1583), 179–184.Google Scholar
Richards, J. B., Mitchell, S. H., de Wit, H., & Seiden, L. S. (1997). Determination of discount functions in rats with an adjusting-amount procedure. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, 67(3), 353–366.Google Scholar
Rutte, C. & Taborsky, M. (2007). Generalized reciprocity in rats. PLoS Biology, 5(7), 1421–1425.Google Scholar
Rutte, C. & Taborsky, M. (2008). The influence of social experience on cooperative behaviour of rats (Rattus norvegicus): Direct vs. generalised reciprocity. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 62(4), 499–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sato, N., Tan, L., Tate, K., & Okada, M. (2015). Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific. Animal Cognition, 18, 1039–1047.Google Scholar
Schino, G., di Giuseppe, F. & Visalberghi, E. (2009). The time frame of partner choice in the grooming reciprocation of Cebus apella. Ethology, 115(1), 70–76.Google Scholar
Schino, G. & Aureli, F. (2009). Reciprocal altruism in primates: Partner choice, cognition, and emotions. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 39, 45–69.Google Scholar
Schino, G. & Aureli, F. (2010). Primate reciprocity and its cognitive requirements. Evolutionary Anthropology, 19(4), 130–135.Google Scholar
Schmid, R., Schneeberger, K., & Taborsky, M. (2017). Feel good – do good? Disentangling reciprocity from unconditional prosociality. Ethology, 123, 640–647.Google Scholar
Schneeberger, K., Dietz, M., & Taborsky, M. (2012). Reciprocal cooperation between unrelated rats depends on cost to donor and benefit to recipient. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 12(1), 41.Google Scholar
Schneeberger, K., Röder, G., & Taborsky, M. (2020). The smell of hunger: Norway rats provision social partners based on odour cues of need. PLoS Biology, 18(3): e3000628.Google Scholar
Schuster, R. H. & Perelberg, A. (2004). Why cooperate? An economic perspective is not enough. Behavioural Processes, 66, 261–277.Google Scholar
Schwab, C., Swoboda, R., Kotrschal, K., & Bugnyar, T. (2012). Recipients affect prosocial and altruistic choices in jackdaws, Corvus monedula. PLoS One, 7(4), e34922.Google Scholar
Schwartz, L. P., Silberberg, A., Casey, A. H., Kearns, D. N., & Slotnick, B. (2016). Does a rat release a soaked conspecific due to empathy? Animal Cognition, 20, 299–308.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. (2020). The social life of Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus). eLife, 9, 54020.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2016). No evidence for audience effects in reciprocal cooperation of Norway rats. Ethology, 122(6), 513–521.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2017). The transfer of alternative tasks in reciprocal cooperation. Animal Behaviour, 131, 35–41.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K., Neuenschwander, J., Engqvist, L., Schneeberger, K., Rentsch, A. K., Gygax, M., & Taborsky, M. (2017). Do female Norway rats form social bonds? Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 71(6), 98.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K., Stieger, B., & Taborsky, M. (2017). Experimental evidence for reciprocity in allogrooming among wild-type Norway rats. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 4010.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2018a). Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) communicate need, which elicits donation of food. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 132(2), 119-129.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2018b). Reciprocal trading of different commodities in Norway rats. Current Biology, 28, 594–599.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2018c). Relatedness decreases and reciprocity increases cooperation in Norway rats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285, 20180035.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Call, J. (2019a). Revisiting the possibility of reciprocal help in non-human primates. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 104, 73–86.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Call, J. (2019b). Reciprocity: Different behavioural strategies, cognitive mechanisms and psychological processes. Learning and Behavior, 47, 284–301.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K., Aeschbacher, J., Santi, M., & Taborsky, M. (2019). Male Norway rats cooperate according to direct but not generalized reciprocity rules. Animal Behaviour, 152, 93–101.Google Scholar
Schweinfurth, M. K. & Taborsky, M. (2020). Rats play tit-for-tat instead of integrating social experience over multiple interactions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286, 20192423.Google Scholar
Silberberg, A., Allouch, C., Sandfort, S., Kearns, D. N., Karpel, H., & Slotnick, B. (2013). Desire for social contact, not empathy, may explain “rescue” behavior in rats. Animal Cognition, 17, 609–618.Google Scholar
Silk, J. B. (2003). Cooperation Without Counting: The Puzzle of Friendship. In Hammerstein, P. (Ed.), Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation(pp. 37–54). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Silk, J. B. (2007). The strategic dynamics of cooperation in primate groups. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 37, 1–41.Google Scholar
Simones, P. M. V. (2007). Cooperation in Rats Playing an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game: Influence of a Game Matrix Formed with Qualitatively Distinct Payoffs. MSc thesis, University of Lisbon, Lisbon.Google Scholar
Stephens, D. W., McLinn, C. M., & Stevens, J. R. (2002). Discounting and reciprocity in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Science, 298(5601), 2216–2218.Google Scholar
Stevens, J. R. & Gilby, I. C. (2004). A conceptual framework for nonkin food sharing: Timing and currency of benefits. Animal Behaviour, 67(4), 603–614.Google Scholar
Stevens, J. R. & Hauser, M. D. (2004). Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 60–65.Google Scholar
Stevens, J. R., Cushman, F. A., & Hauser, M. D. (2005). Evolving the psychological mechanisms for cooperation. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 36(1), 499–518.Google Scholar
Stieger, B., Schweinfurth, M. K., & Taborsky, M. (2017). Reciprocal allogrooming among unrelated Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) is affected by previously received cooperative, affiliative and aggressive behaviours. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 71, 182.Google Scholar
Suchak, M., Eppley, T. M., Campbell, M. W., Feldman, R. A., Quarles, L. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2016). How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(36), 10215–10220.Google Scholar
Taborsky, M., Frommen, J. G., & Riehl, C. (2016). Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371, 20150084.Google Scholar
Telle, H. (1966). Beitrag zur Erkenntnis der Verhaltensweise von Ratten, vergleichend dargestellt bei Rattus norvegicus und Rattus rattus. Zeitschrift für angewandte Zoologie, 53, 129–196.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.Google Scholar
Viana, D. S., Gordo, I., Sucena, E., & Moita, M. M. (2010). Cognitive and motivational requirements for the emergence of cooperation in a rat social game. PLoS One, 5(1), e8483.Google Scholar
de Waal, F. B. M. & Berger, M. L. (2000). Payment for labour in monkeys. Nature, 404, 563.Google Scholar
Weibull, J. W. (1985). Discounted-value representations of temporal preferences. Mathematics of Operations Research, 10(2), 244–250.Google Scholar
Wood, R. I., Kim, J. Y., & Li, G. R. (2016). Cooperation in rats playing the iterated Prisoner’s dilemma game. Animal Behaviour, 114, 27–35.Google Scholar
Wrighten, S. A. & Hall, C. R. (2016). Support for altruistic behavior in rats. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, 93–102.Google Scholar
Yee, J. R., Cavigelli, S. A., Delgado, B., & McClintock, M. K. (2008). Reciprocal affiliation among adolescent rats during a mild group stressor predicts mammary tumors and lifespan. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70(9), 1050–1059.Google Scholar
Zentall, T. R. (2015). Reciprocal altruism in rats: Why does it occur? Learning & Behavior, 44(7), 15–16.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×