In several studies, it has been found that repeated exposure to a novel food increases children’s acceptance of the exposure food. The present study, investigated how repeated exposure influences the acceptance of two Nordic berry juices, and whether the development depends on initial liking of the product, in 9–11 year-old children. The study had 317 participants. Two groups of children were exposed to either sea-buckthorn (n = 92) or aronia (n = 105) juice eight times, and performed two follow-up sessions 3 and 6 months after the 8th exposure. A third group (n = 120) served as controls. During pre and post-test sessions all participating children evaluated acceptance of both juices.

Intake of sea-buckthorn juice increased significantly over the eight exposures (55.1 ± 7.3 till 108.8 ± 12.3) and remained high after 6 months (131.1 ± 13.2). Intake of aronia juice was only increased at follow-up sessions. Liking did not develop significantly for any of the juices across exposures. When children were grouped by their initial liking increased intake across exposures was observed regardless of initial liking of sea-buckthorn. Liking developed similarly for both juices. A significant increase was found for the ‘initial dislikers’ only. This study demonstrates how exposure effects are influenced by initial liking; it appears that changes in familiarity explain the changes seen for sea-buckthorn among ‘dislikers’. ‘Initial dislikers’ had the most benefit from repeated exposures, but did not reach ‘initial likers’ across eight exposures; more exposures in the group of ‘initial dislikers’ had possibly led to even higher liking and intake. The increased intake observed for ‘neutral likers’ and ‘initial likers’ of sea-buckthorn was not explained by increased familiarity or increased liking.

Semiochemicals are chemicals used to communicate. Animals tend to use these e.g. to locate food sources or to find a suitable mate. In this study, the sex pheromone of the Indian meal moth, Plodia interpunctella, was analysed. Since this is an economically important species, it is mass-reared in labs and science centers worldwide for experimental purposes. A culture of these moths was brought into the lab at Lund University for studies and has after that served as a model species demonstrating up-wind pheromone-mediated male flight in different courses held by the university. As years went by, the culture got less successful in up-wind flights, most probably because of inbreeding and bottleneck effects, and therefore, a new culture was taken in. This study focuses on using various experiments to see if there was a behavioral and/or physiological difference between the two cultures. Results show a significant difference in behavioral traits (frequency of calling behavior in females and in male up-wind flights) but not in physiological traits (female pheromone production or male antennal response). This study discusses some effects of mass-reared lab cultures.

Wool sucking and wool eating are comparatively unusual behavioral problems in domestic cats. They have not been studied much, despite having been known for a long time. There is a lack of well formulated hypotheses that can explain the results from the only published study about the subject thus far.  Because of that need, an internet-based survey with 205 cats was performed. According to the results, the natural suckling behavior can remain into adulthood when a kitten is taken from its mother before 5-6 weeks of age. The suckling behavior is directed towards fabric in the form of the oral stereotypy wool sucking. Wool eating turned out to be a stereotypic behavior too, but in this case associated with the degree of object play that a cat engages in. The degree of object play is higher in younger cats than in older cats, and also higher in breeds of Southeast Asian origin than in other breeds. The degree of wool eating turned out to follow the same pattern as the degree of object play. Wool eating thus seems to be a misdirected predatory behavior. It is still unclear if there is a connection between wool sucking and wool eating or not.