Fig. 1

Schematic photographs of the decision-making paradigm designs and performances with or without social information. Two small wire-topped plastic home cages (30 × 18 × 16 cm) with 200 g standard rodent food pellets on both side of cages, a, b (white); right side cage, c, d (white); or sweet food on left side cage, c, d (red) on the removable wire mesh placed in the open field. A rat of the same gender resided on the right side of cage for at least 1 week before the experiment (b, d). For each trial, the open-field rat had to make a choice and select to forage food from either or both of the two cages. a Student^’s t- test indicated that there was no significant difference in the ratio of foraged standard food from either side of cages; b the percentage of foraged standard food pellets was increased significantly from the rat-residing cage relative to that from the no-rat cage; c rats preferred to forage sweet food pellets. The percentage of foraged standard food pellets was less than that of foraged sweet food pellets; d there was no significant difference between the percentage of foraged standard food pellets from the rat-residing cage and foraged sweet food pellets from the no-rat cage. ***p<0.001 represents statistically significant differences compared to foraged standard food pellets from the no rat cage (b), ***p<0.001 represents statistically significant differences compared to foraged sweet food (c)