instances there is no attempt by the rats to salvage 
the food — even if it is fresh. The scattered cache is 
merely covered with dirt or left exposed to the 
weather. Occasionally this excavated food is 
retrieved: On December 2, 1947, 177 Purina 
checkers were excavated from holes about the 
North Alley Burrow". All were gone on December 
4. Furthermore, food caches may be destroyed by 
the rats within their harborages. In a number of 
instances rats have assembled food caches in 
harborage boxes and then subsequently begun a 
burrow through the side of the box. In these cases 
the dirt from the burrow w'as excavated out into 
the box until it covered the cache. The food was 
in no instance uncovered later. It merely remained 
covered and decayed. 
As mentioned previously female 43 had by June 
8, 1948, assembled over 500 Purina checkers in 
the harborage box with her week-old young. Yet, 
during the next few days she completely covered 
over this cache with dirt she was excavating from 
a burrow" leading from the box. One of the great- 
est values of stored food is that it may be available 
to the young rats at the time of their weaning. 
Thus, the mother destroyed food that could have 
maintained her litter for a week or 10 days after 
they were weaned. It, therefore, appears that the 
behavior of transporting and storing food is 
entirely dissociated from its usage. This is another 
line of evidence that the rats attribute no signifi- 
cance to the food object itself. It reinforces the 
belief that food objects are rarely factors in the 
initiation of fighting (see p. 102). 
H. The Food Acquisition Component in the Syndrome 
of the Social Outcast (see p. 196). There are six 
aspects to this behavior which were observed to 
hold in part or in entirety for several rats: 
I. There is an increased nonharborage storage 
immediately outside the Food Pen. 
2. There is an increased storage in the activity 
recorder shelters at the entries to the Food Pen. 
3. There is a storage of food or eating in the 
corners of the Food Pen. This was only ob- 
served for the few rats which exhibited several 
of the characteristics of the syndrome. (In 
all three of the above storage activities the 
food might be left and not used by the rat 
involved.) 
4. There is an avoidance of other rats who come 
into the Food Pen even though these rats may 
pay no attention to these avoiding rats. 
5. There is a hesitancy to enter the Food Pen 
even though no other rats are about. This 
behavior take the form of repeated approach- 
withdrawals before finally entering the Food 
Pen. 
6. The acquisition of food by these rats becomes 
concentrated during the light hours of the 
day when most other rats are inactive. 
All the rats which exhibited all or most of this 
constellation of behaviors had much in common in 
their history. The following are brief sketches of 
these histories, which list those factors which it is 
believed have relevancy to the development of the 
above behaviors: 
Group 7. Female 7 and male 8. Each was the 
smallest of the five rats of each sex introduced into 
the pen in February 1947. Each was subject to 
considerable punitive action from its associates. 
They were dominated by those rats which were 
introduced with them into the pen as well as by 
many of the rats w r hich were born later. At an 
estimated age of 1 year each fell into the Maturity 
Index Group III. As pointed out in the later sec- 
tion on growth this means that with respect to the 
rest of the population these rats grew very very 
slowly and attained only a very low mature weight 
and size. 
Group 2. Original male 12 and male 83 born at 
the North Alley Burrow. The common factor here 
was that each rat enjoyed a much more favorable 
status earlier in life than they did later on when the 
abnormal behaviors relating to food acquisition 
appeared. During 1947 male 12 dominated the 
other introduced males, and he also maintained 
this status with reference to the males born in 1947, 
However, in the spring of 1948, as he reached an 
estimated age of over 600 days, he began to lose 
weight and began to be dominated by the males 
born in 1947. Coincident with this shift several of 
the behavior in the above list appeared. Male 83 
during the first 3 months of life exhibited a very 
rapid growth, but during the next 3 months there 
was a considerable inhibition of his growth rate. 
As an adult he was not only frequently whipped by 
other adults but he also tended to associate in har- 
borages with other rats with equally unfavorable 
histories. At 403 days of age he was seen to eat 
and form a cache in a corner of the Food Pen. 
Group 3. This is the largest single group of rats 
with somewhat similar histories. It consists of the 
three Litter 3 females (17, 20, and 25) as well as the 
six members of Litter 13 (males 54, 56, 57, and 59, 
108 
