Olfaction is one of the important factors rodents use to discover food in field conditions.In order to survey the effect of smell on seed collection and search,we conducted experiments in enclosures in the Yugong area,Jiyuan Henan,China in July 2013.Two types of artificial seeds,peanuts kernels (PK) and peanuts kernels wrapped with plastic wrap (PKW) ,were either placed above ground (AG group) or buried 2 cm underground (UG group) ,and then the foraging process of the large field mouse (Apodemus peninsulae) was monitored using video equipment.The results showed that: (1) in the AG group,rodents were twice as likely to detect PKW seeds than PK seeds; however,in the UG group,there were no significant differences in the detection of PK and PKW seeds; (2) A.peninsulae harvested 100% PK seeds and 50% PKW seeds in AG group,and harvested 55% PK seeds and 20% PKW seeds in UG group.The results indicated that olfaction played an important role in finding aboveground more than for underground food items.