Abstract
Food-carrying behavior in foraging situation is supposed to be affected by risk avoidance tendency. In the present study, food-carrying behavior for 190, 300, 500, and 750mg food pellets was compared in Tsukuba High and Low Emotional strains (THE and TLE) of rats. Food-carrying ratios of THE did not differ among all sizes of food, while those of TLE significantly increased as the food size became larger. Although there was no significant difference in the ratio between two strains for each food size, the ratios of TLE were relatively higher than those of THE except for the smallest food. These results imply that food carrying is not affected by risk avoidance based on the emotionality. However, ‘emotionality’ in THE and TLE is supposed to be defined as the reactivity to novel situations, so it might be different from emotion of fear and/or anxiety necessary for risk avoidance tendency to affect food carrying postulated here. Further studies are necessary to ascertain the postulate.
