The presence of informed conspecifics improves individual foraging efficiency in naïve sheep

Abstract

Knowledge about the environment is fundamentally important to move, find resources and forage efficiently. This information can either be acquired through individual exploration (personal information) or from other group members (social information). We experimentally assessed the use of social information and its influence on foraging efficiency in sheep, Ovis aries. Naïve individuals paired with an informed partner that knew the food patch location, found the patch significantly faster compared to naïve individuals paired with another naïve individual. Similarly, they spent a significantly lower proportion of time exploring areas away from the food patch. We further found that the outcome of using social information in one directly previous trial (success = access to feed vs failure = no access to feed) had no impact and sheep continued to use social information in the subsequent foraging trial and foraged similarly efficient. Our results suggest, naïve sheep that are unfamiliar with resource locations, forage more efficiently when informed individuals are present compared to when all individuals are naïve. If informed individuals play a similar role in larger groups, new management practices that integrate informed sheep could be developed to improve foraging efficiency when sheep are moved to new paddocks or in paddocks with heterogenous and dynamic resource distribution.