When Life Gives You Lemons, Squeeze Your Way Through: Understanding Citrus Avoidance Behaviour by Free-Ranging Dogs in India
Tuhin Subhra Pal, Srijaya Nandi, Rohan Sarkar, Anindita Bhadra

TL;DR
This study investigates how free-ranging dogs in India avoid citrus-contaminated food while scavenging, revealing their adaptation strategies to urban citrus waste and their selective avoidance behavior.
Contribution
It provides novel insights into the citrus avoidance behavior of free-ranging dogs and their adaptation to citrus-rich urban environments in India.
Findings
Dogs avoid lemon-contaminated chicken, especially at higher lemon concentrations.
Dogs prefer low-concentration lemon-dipped chicken over higher concentrations.
Local people discard lemon-contaminated food, but do not restrict free-ranging dogs from scavenging.
Abstract
Palatability of food is driven by multiple factors like taste, smell, texture, freshness, etc. and can be very variable across species. There are classic examples of local adaptations leading to speciation, driven by food availability. Urbanization across the world is causing rapid decline of biodiversity, while also driving local adaptations in some species. Free-ranging dogs are an interesting example of adaptation to a human-dominated environment across varied habitats. They have co-existed with humans for centuries and are a perfect model system for studying local adaptations. We attempted to understand a specific aspect of their scavenging behaviour in India: citrus aversion. Pet dogs are known to avoid citrus fruits and food contaminated by them. In India, lemons are used widely in the cuisine, and discarded in the garbage. Hence, free-ranging dogs, that typically are scavengers…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPlant Physiology and Cultivation Studies
