Information Literacy and Rats

The other library I work for is sending me to a BI workshop next week, and for homework
we've been asked to locate useful articles and resources on library instruction.
In doing so, I ran across a library-instruction.blogspot.com , an IL blog out of
the UK. Among other useful information and news items on the blog, Shiela Webber
summarizes research about rats' food-related information-seeking behavior:

"Basically, rats recognise that they need information about where to get food. They come across smells of novel kinds of food in various ways. However, they have identified that a good way of evaluating whether this is information they should use or not is by whether they encounter the smell on the breath of another rat that's just eaten the food (the idea being that if Rat B has eaten the food and Rat B is still breathing, the new food must be OK). Rat A then jogs away to the new food, accesses it and synthesises it."
http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2006/08/il-of-rats.html

I'm posting this for two reasons. First and foremost, I find this extraordinarily amusing. Second, I can indeed see the parallels in the information-seeking behaviors of rats and library patrons. Not that I'm calling our patrons rats. Certainly not. However, patrons share share their library experiences with each other. When students or other potential patrons need information, I suspect that they consult their peers first to find out which resources are the best, fastest, most friendly, etc. If they find out that their friends have had a positive experience at the library, they are more likely to search for information at the library themselves (I've heard students tell their friends "Ask them, they're helpful"). If the patron's friends have had negative experiences in the library, the friends will likely tell that patron to find the information somewhere else (much like Rat A checking to see if Rat B is alive before eating something new). This information-seeking habit of patrons certainly isn't ground-breaking news, I like the analogy (and I think I could extend it to patrons attempting to navigate the UGL maze . . . hmmm. . . )