Abstract
Natural food odours elicit different behavioural responses in snails. The tentacle carries an olfactory organ, and it either protracts toward a stimulating carrot odour or retraces in a startle-like fashion away from a cucumber odour. The tentacle retraction to cucumber was still present after the snails were fed cucumber during inter-trial periods. Also, snails without any food experience displayed a longer latency to the first bite of cucumber than of carrot and rejected cucumber more often. After tasting these foods, the latency to carrot was not affected while the latency to and number of rejections of cucumber decreased. These results suggest that initial repulsive features of food odour can be only partially compensated by olfactory learning and feeding experience. In the present study, we demonstrated that an invertebrate can be repulsed or attracted by the same natural odour at the same time and that these behavioural responses are likely aimed at achieving different physiologically relevant goals.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Prof. George Kemenes for participation in data discussion and to Dr. Richard Boyle for comments on manuscript and editing. The work was supported by RFBR grants to P.B., I.Z., grant MK-2067.2007.4 to E.N. All the experiments comply with the “Principles of animal care”, publication No. 86-23, revised 1985 of the National Institute of Health, and also with the current laws of Russia.
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Nikitin, E.S., Korshunova, T.A., Zakharov, I.S. et al. Olfactory experience modifies the effect of odour on feeding behaviour in a goal-related manner. J Comp Physiol A 194, 19–26 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-007-0272-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-007-0272-4