Does novelty influence foraging decision of a scavenger?

Abstract

Acquiring knowledge about the environment is crucial for survival. Animals, often driven by their explorative tendencies, gather valuable information regarding food resources, shelter, mating partners, etc. While neophilia, or the preference for novel environmental stimuli or objects, can promote exploratory behaviour, neophobia, or avoidance of novel environmental stimuli, can constrain such behaviour. Neophobia can reduce predation risk, yet decreased exploratory behaviour resulting from it may limit the ability to discover potentially highly rewarding resources. Dogs (Canis familiaris) living in semi-urban and urban environments as free-ranging populations are, although subject to various selection forces, typically have negligible predation pressure. These dogs are scavengers in human-dominated environments; thus, selection against object-neophobia can provide benefits when searching for novel food resources. Although pet and captive pack-living dogs are known to exhibit neophilia when provided with novel objects, little is known about free-ranging dogs’ behavioural responses to novel objects, particularly in foraging contexts. Using an object choice experiment, we tested 274 free-ranging dogs from two age classes, adult and juvenile, to investigate their object-neophobia in a scavenging context. We employed a betweensubject study design, providing dogs with a familiar and a potentially novel object, both baited with equal but (partially)hidden food rewards. Adult and juvenile dogs significantly inspected the novel object first compared to the familiar one, even when we reduced the visual obscurity of the familiar object, i.e., when the hidden food reward was partially visible. Furthermore, novel objects with varying strengths of olfactory cues (baited vs. false-baited) were inspected comparably by adults and juveniles. No significant differences were found in the latencies to inspect the objects. These results indicate that free-ranging dogs, evidently from an early ontogenic phase, do not show object-neophobia, as demonstrated by their preference for novel over familiar food sources. We conclude that little to no constraint of neophobia on exploratory behaviour, yet selection for object-neophilia in semi-urban and urban-dwelling animals can guide foraging decision-making processes, providing adaptive benefits.