Rats track odour trails accurately using a multi-layered strategy with near-optimal sampling

Tracking odour trails is a crucial behaviour for many animals, often leading to food, mates or away from danger. It is an excellent example of active sampling, where the animal itself controls how to sense the environment. Here we show that rats can track odour trails accurately with near-optimal sa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2012-02, Vol.3 (1), p.703-703, Article 703
Main Authors: Khan, Adil Ghani, Sarangi, Manaswini, Bhalla, Upinder Singh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/2624/1703
631/601/18
Animals
Female
Food
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Odorants
Olfactory Bulb - physiology
Olfactory Perception
Rats
Rats, Wistar
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Smell - physiology
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Summary:Tracking odour trails is a crucial behaviour for many animals, often leading to food, mates or away from danger. It is an excellent example of active sampling, where the animal itself controls how to sense the environment. Here we show that rats can track odour trails accurately with near-optimal sampling. We trained rats to follow odour trails drawn on paper spooled through a treadmill. By recording local field potentials (LFPs) from the olfactory bulb, and sniffing rates, we find that sniffing but not LFPs differ between tracking and non-tracking conditions. Rats can track odours within ∼1 cm, and this accuracy is degraded when one nostril is closed. Moreover, they show path prediction on encountering a fork, wide 'casting' sweeps on encountering a gap and detection of reappearance of the trail in 1–2 sniffs. We suggest that rats use a multi-layered strategy, and achieve efficient sampling and high accuracy in this complex task. Animals track odour trails to find food, a mate or to steer clear of danger. Bhalla and colleagues combine behavioural and physiological measurements to show that rats can track surface-borne odours with near-optimal sampling and are able to predict the path direction on encountering a bifurcation.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms1712