Abstract
An adult femaleLemur catta and an adult femaleEulemur fulvus were given edible rewards for scratching. Both subjects learned to scratch in order to obtain the rewards, showed diminished rates of scratching during periods of extinction, and learned to scratch preferentially with one foot when required. TheLemur catta subject was more responsive to the changing experimental conditions than theEulemur fulvus. The conditionability of scratching in primates does not appear to be directly related to the widespread occurrence of scratching in simian social contexts.
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Anderson, J.R., Fritsch, C. & Favre, B. Operant conditioning of scratching in lemurs. Primates 31, 611–615 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02382546
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02382546