| A previous experiment suggested that male degus, Octodon degus, use dustbathing during intrasexual communication. Herein, we assessed whether dustbathing by male and female degus is influenced by the social familiarity of previous marks. During 15-min tests, we contrasted the behavior of degus individually exposed during to an arena containing loose, previously dustbathed sand by a same-sex and socially familiar individual with that of degus exposed to an arena with soil previously dustbathed by a same-sex but socially unfamiliar conspecific. We measured the number of dusbathing eventts per min, the latency of first dusbathing event, and the location of dusbathing events by depositor and responser individuals. Both male and female degus dusbathe at a... |
