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Why are unfamiliar foods more readily accepted when other animals are eating them?

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Two wild horses graze on tall grass in the open prairie of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with rolling badlands visible in the background. — Feeding behaviour Wild horses graze in the Badlands of North Dakota.

The tendency for animals to more readily accept unfamiliar food when observing others eating it is a phenomenon known as social facilitation.

In this context, the sight of other members of the same or different species engaging in feeding acts as a stimulus that influences both the timing of an individual's feeding and their choice of food items. This behavior has been documented across various groups, including mammals, birds, and fish.1

While social facilitation encourages an animal to engage in the activity of feeding, it is distinct from observational learning or imitation, where an animal might acquire specific skills or knowledge about how to process food by watching others. Instead, social facilitation primarily serves to lower the threshold for an animal to approach and consume a novel food source by utilizing the presence of conspecifics as a cue that the food is safe or palatable.21