question: How do animals/pets know what they can and can't eat?
comment: Wild animals might know what they can/can’t eat because of natural instincts and watching others. Pets, on the other hand, don’t know the difference between something good for them and something that will hurt them
passages: BULLET::::- Before birth: In utero, fetal rats detect odor-bearing particles that come from their mother's diet and cross the placental barrier. Shortly after birth, newborn rats respond positively to these foods.
  
  BULLET::::- During nursing: Nursing rats receive information about their mother's diet through her milk. They prefer the foods she ate during lactation.
  
  BULLET::::- Weaning: When young rats are weaning and eating solid foods for the first time, they use adult rats as guides. They forage where the adults are foraging or where adults have previously scent-marked.
   Often behavioral and passive characteristics are combined, for example a prey animal may look similar to and behave like its hunter's own predator (see mimicry).
  
  Section::::Prey detection using different senses.
   Social learning also provides individuals with information about food sources in an environment. This can include information on where to find food, what to eat, and how to eat it. There are several examples in the animal kingdom in which animals utilize social learning to find food. For example, birds are more likely to forage in areas where they already see birds feeding. The Norway rat ("Rattus norvegicus") also utilizes social learning behaviors to find food sources. Mature rats leave sensory trails to and from food sources that are preferentially followed by naive pups. Animals can also learn what to eat from social learning with conspecifics. Experimentally discerning harmful foods from edible foods can be dangerous for a naive individual; however, inexperienced individuals can avoid this cost through observing older individuals that already have acquired this knowledge. For example, several species of bird will avoid food if they see another individual eat it and become ill. Observation can also educate the observer about how to eat particular foods. Red squirrels ("Sciurus vulgaris") have been shown to more successfully open hickory nuts after watching more experienced squirrels open the nuts.
   There are two ways in which animals can gain knowledge. The first of these two ways is learning. This is when an animal gathers information about its surrounding environment and then proceeds to use this information. For example, if an animal eats something that hurts its stomach, it has learned not to eat this again. The second way that an animal can acquire knowledge is through innate knowledge. This knowledge is genetically inherited. The animal automatically knows it without any prior experience. An example of this is when a horse is born and can immediately walk. The horse has not learned this behavior; it simply knows how to do it. In some scenarios, innate knowledge is more beneficial than learned knowledge. However, in other scenarios the opposite is true.
   There are a variety of methods used to detect prey. Sensory systems used include the visual system, olfactory system (smell), auditory system (hearing) and the somatosensory system (such as touch). Some predators may use all of these senses in pinpointing their prey, while others may depend mainly or entirely on a single one. Detection methods may also be divided into direct detection of the prey organism itself, and indirect clues, such as the smell of its urine.
  
  Section::::Prey detection using different senses.:Visual.
  
  Visual predators may form what is termed a search image of certain prey.
   BULLET::::- Adolescence and adulthood: When rats forage on their own, their food choices are influenced by social interactions that may take place far away from foraging sites. They smell foods on the fur, whiskers and especially the breath of other rats and strongly prefer the foods those rats had previously eaten.
  
  Section::::Teaching.
   The Knower-Guesser method has been used in many studies relating to animal ToM. Animals are tested in a two-stage procedure. At the beginning of each trial in the first discrimination training stage, an animal is in a room with two humans. One human, designated the "Guesser," leaves the room, and the other, the "Knower," baits one of several containers. The containers are screened so that the animal can see who does the baiting, but not where the food has been placed. After baiting, the Guesser returns to the room, the screen is removed, and each human points directly at a container. The Knower points at the baited container, and the Guesser at one of the other three, chosen at random. The animal is allowed to search one container and to keep the food if it is found.
   In the early 1990s, Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card from PARC noticed the similarities between users' information searching patterns and animal food foraging strategies. Working together with psychologists to analyse users' actions and the information landscape that they navigated (links, descriptions, and other data), they showed that information seekers use the same strategies as food foragers.
   Section::::Research questions.:Spatial cognition.
  
  Whether an animal ranges over a territory measured in square kilometers or square meters, its survival typically depends on its ability to do such things as find a food source and then return to its nest. Sometimes such a task can be performed rather simply, for example by following a chemical trail. Typically, however, the animal must somehow acquire and use information about locations, directions, and distances. The following paragraphs outline some of the ways that animals do this. 
   BULLET::::- Rodents share common species-typical feeding behaviors (also known as order-typical, since all these creatures are members of the same order, "rodentia". For example, certain types of beavers, squirrels, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, and prairie dogs all locate food by sniffing for it, grasp for food with their mouths, sit on their hindquarters to eat, and grasp/manipulate the food with their hands. But they each also have more unique feeding behaviors. For example, beavers do grasp for food with their mouths, but sometimes they use a single paw instead. And many of the rodents manipulate the food with their digits in unique ways.
   Section::::Methods.:Competitive feeding paradigm.
  
  The competitive feeding paradigm approach is considered by some as evidence that animals have some understanding of the relationship between "seeing" and "knowing".
   Predators need not locate their host directly: Kestrels for instance are able to detect the faeces and urine of their prey (which reflect ultraviolet), allowing them to identify areas where there are large numbers of voles, for example. This adaptation is essential in prey detection, as voles are quick to hide from such predators.
  
  Section::::Prey detection using different senses.:Chemical.
   BULLET::::- "Pet Shop" - Cat shows Dog's surprise which is a hopping toy parrot. They then watch, on TV, a mother and a daughter visiting a pet shop (one of which includes a parrot) to buy a pet rabbit and food to go with it. Cat observes its noisy atmosphere and asks Dog to guess the noises of three devices, those being a bell, a telephone and a clock. Cat congratulates Dog's listening skills and linking this, she draws him a picture of a notable listening animal with very big ears: a rabbit. They then play the guessing the game revolving around what rabbits like to eat.
   The substances are applied to the skin or dripped into the eyes; injected intravenously, intramuscularly, or subcutaneously; inhaled either by placing a mask over the animals and restraining them, or by placing them in an inhalation chamber; or administered orally, through a tube into the stomach, or simply in the animal's food. Doses may be given once, repeated regularly for many months, or for the lifespan of the animal.
   BULLET::::2. Ears: It can hear, and will turn towards the source. Owners can name it and teach it verbal commands using "learning stones".
  
  BULLET::::3. Nose and mouth: It can sense what kind of "food" or "medicine" owners are feeding and then it will choose to eat or not according to its simulated needs and wants.
  
  BULLET::::4. Skin: It can sense the temperature of its surroundings and react accordingly; it can sense whether it is being petted or hit and react to touch.
  
  BULLET::::5. Time: It can recognize the time to wake up, eat and sleep. ]*
   Section::::Behaviour.:Feeding.
   Section::::Behavior and life history.:Intelligence.
  
  Rodents have advanced cognitive abilities. They can quickly learn to avoid poisoned baits, which makes them difficult pests to deal with. Guinea pigs can learn and remember complex pathways to food. Squirrels and kangaroo rats are able to locate caches of food by spatial memory, rather than just by smell.
   Observational learning for cats can be described in terms of the drive to complete the behaviour, the cue that initiates the behaviour, the response to the cue, and the reward for completing the behaviour. This is shown above when cats learn predatory behaviour from their mothers. The drive is hunger, the cue is the prey, the response is to catch the prey, and the reward is to relieve the hunger sensation.
   Section::::Characters.:Secondary characters.:Foodar.
  
  Foodar is a Canadian cat who has a bizarre radar-like-seventh sense (according to Bucky all cats have 6, the sixth being knowing which humans are afraid of them or dislike them so they can sit on their laps) that allows him to detect food from up to several meters away (though he doesn't bother detecting fruit or vegetables). His name is a portmanteau of 'food' and 'radar'.
  
  Section::::Characters.:Secondary characters.:Oreo.
   There is often a self-perpetuating co-evolution, or evolutionary arms race, between the perceptive abilities of animals attempting to detect the cryptic animal and the cryptic characteristics of the hiding species. Different aspects of crypsis and sensory abilities may be more or less pronounced in given predator-prey species pairs.
  
  Zoologists need special methods to study cryptic animals, including biotelemetry techniques such as radio tracking, mark and recapture, and enclosures or exclosures. Cryptic animals tend to be overlooked in studies of biodiversity and ecological risk assessment.
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- Dive Gallery: decorator crabs.
  
  BULLET::::- Caterpillar that resembles bird droppings on leaves.
   Training starts with socialization at the age of 5–6 weeks and then through the principles of 'operant conditioning'. After two weeks they learn to associate a "click" sound with a food reward - banana or peanuts. Once they know that "click" means food the rats are ready to be trained on a target scent. According to the type of specialization a series of training stages are followed, each one building on the skill learned in the previous stage. The complexity of their tasks gradually increases until they have to do a final blind test. Rats that fail the test are retired and are cared for the rest of their life.
   This model is derived from anthropological theories and is comparable to foraging for food. Information seekers use clues (or information scents) such as links, summaries and images to estimate how close they are to target information. A scent must be obvious as users often browse aimlessly or look for specific information. Information foraging is descriptive of why and not how people search in particular ways.
  
  Section::::Models.:Life in the round.
  
  Developed by Elfreda Chatman.
   According to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a digest is an additive that has been treated with heat, enzymes, or also acids to produce a concentrated product intended as a natural flavoring. Pet food may legally be labelled as "Chicken Flavored" regardless of the percentage of chicken-derived product it contains, so long as the chicken flavoring is deemed "perceptible."
  
  If a product is labeled as "flavored" by a certain type of meat, the digest it contains must have been produced from tissues pertaining to the listed animal species. Chicken flavored food must be flavored with chicken digest.
   Section::::Biology and behavior.:Diet.
  
  Like all equids, onagers are herbivorous mammals. They eat grasses, herbs, leaves, fruits, and saline vegetation when available, but browse on shrubs and trees in drier habitats. They have also been seen feeding on seed pods such as "Prosopis" and breaking up woody vegetation with their hooves to get at more succulent herbs growing at the base of woody plants.
   Since 2001, a non-charitable organisation called the Waltham Foundation has funded a number of humane scientific research projects dedicated to furthering the health and nutrition of companion animals.
  
  Section::::Research.
  
  BULLET::::- In July 2005, in collaboration with the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Pennsylvania, Waltham discovered that cats cannot taste sweet food because they have a faulty gene. Lions, tigers, leopards and pumas (Felidae family) have the same defective gene.
  
presuppositions: Pets know what they can and can't eat. Pets know what they can and can't eat.
corrections: Pets don’t know the difference between something good for them and something that will hurt them. Pets don't know the difference between what they can and can't eat.
raw_presuppositions: Pets know what they can and can't eat. Pets know what they can and can't eat.
raw_corrections: Pets don’t know the difference between something good for them and something that will hurt them. Pets don't know the difference between what they can and can't eat.