Meal patterns of cats encountering variable food procurement cost.
Animals treat response cost like a daily budget, adjusting when and how much they eat or work while keeping the total payoff steady.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists watched cats earn every meal by pressing a bar. The bar gave food only after a changing number of presses.
The cats lived in a closed cage 24 h a day. They could press whenever they wanted. The team logged each meal size and time.
What they found
Cats kept their daily food intake almost the same. They just changed how often and how much they ate per meal.
When the bar cost was high, cats ate fewer but bigger meals. When the cost dropped, they switched to many small snacks.
How this fits with other research
Bachman et al. (1988) saw the same energy-budget rule in pigeons. When pecking cost rose, the birds cut trips to the feeder and later lowered body heat to save energy. The cats skipped the body-cooling trick, yet both species guarded total intake.
Green et al. (1987) looked at the flip side: free food. Pigeons given free grain plus half-paid grain worked and ate less. Together with Smith et al. (1997), the pair shows animals treat food like money: they balance work, freebies, and meal size to keep the daily "paycheck" steady.
Attwood et al. (1988) let pigeons choose between fixed and climbing ratio schedules. Birds picked the option that gave the best long-run rate, not the easiest next response. The cats did the same: they tracked the average bar cost across the day, not the last press.
Why it matters
Your clients also run an inner budget. If a task suddenly costs more responses, they may not quit—they may just wait, then do bigger chunks. When you add free reinforcers, they may work less than you hoped. Use these studies to set realistic schedules: keep the long-term rate attractive and watch for hidden savings like longer breaks or slower pace.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The meal patterns of 2 cats in a laboratory habitat with variable foraging costs were examined in a foraging paradigm in which subjects could initiate meals at any time by completing a predetermined number of bar presses (the procurement price) and then could eat any amount. From meal to meal, the procurement price either was fixed or varied among a geometric series of five prices. As the fixed price or the mean of the variable prices increased, meal frequency decreased and meal size increased; daily intake was unaffected. Within variable-price schedules, meal size was not related to the just-paid procurement price. These results suggest that cats respond to the global rather than to the local cost structure of their habitat. They appear to respond to an average of the prices encountered, initiating meals of a frequency and size appropriate to that average. This was true even when the average price was high, meals were infrequent, and thus price encounters were widely separated in time. Therefore, the time window over which the consequences of behavior can affect behavior is longer than often conceived, at least in economies in which the animal controls its intake and the frequency, size, and distribution of its meals.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1997 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1997.67-303