Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are not neophobic toward novel food with a high sugar content |
| |
Authors: | Johnson Elizabeth C |
| |
Institution: | Department of Psychology, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. bjohnson@oglethorpe.edu |
| |
Abstract: | While we know that food neophobia in nonhuman primates is affected by social factors, little is known about how palatability, and specifically sugar content, might ameliorate a monkey's hesitancy to eat a novel food. It is likely that an innate preference for sweet substances would alter an animal's typical neophobic response. To test this, I presented nine male rhesus macaques with novel foods that contained a low, high, or no amount of sugar. As expected, the monkeys exhibited a neophobic response to the no-sugar novel foods but not to the high-sugar novel foods. Previous research on food neophobia may need to be reevaluated in light of the effects of sugar content on the neophobic response. |
| |
Keywords: | food neophobia novel food palatability feeding diet rhesus macaques |
本文献已被 PubMed 等数据库收录! |
|