Neophobia Wild rats, although they eventually sample everything within range, at first avoid an unfamiliar food, or familiar food in a new place. There are two aspects of the effect of "new object reaction" on food consumption. First, an environmental change may cause an interruption of feeding even though the food is not changed or moved. This evidently represents a generalized state of "fear". Second, a change in the conditions at a feeding point may reduce the amount eaten at that point, without necessarily influencing eating elsewhere. We have seen that neophobia wanes, as a rule, quite rapidly. If a new food becomes available, increasing amounts of it are eaten, until it may even be preferred to what was eaten before. When the amount of food is less than the rats can eat, a further effect is observed. Thompson has studied this in colonies living in natural conditions; some of the rats had been caught, marked and released, so that they could be individually observed. This showed the progressive concentration of feeding near the time when food was made available each evening by an experimenter; in these conditions, the intensity of feeding is increased, and its duration reduced. Here the behavior is adapted, not only to a topographical situation, but also to a time relationship. We shall see that the behavior of rats towards new foods protects them very efficiently from poison. Source: the book "The Rat: A Study in Behaviour" by S.A. Barnett