Laboratory animal behaviour
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What is evolution?
The change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations Due to variation, natural selection, and sexual selection
Name six general characteristics of domesticated animals
• Less fear of humans • increased social tolerance • earlier sexual maturation • less pronounced sexual season • preserved juvenile behaviour • basal behaviour effects unaffected by domestication (nestbuilding in pigs, dust-bathing in hen)
What is ethology?
The study of characters of animals in their natural habit
What is a behaviour?
• Movements and sounds associated with an animal of a certain species, age and sex • reflexes are not behaviour
How are behaviours produced?
By the interaction of internal and external stimuli and motivation
Phylogenetic/innate behavirous vs aquired
• innate: specific to one or several species • acquired: specirif to the individual
What is the ethoexperimental approach?
• Combination of ethology and experimental psychology • study natural behaviours under controlled conditions in the lab
main motives for knowledge about animal behaviour under lab conditions / Why do we need to know the normal animal behaviour under lab conditions, i.e. why to we bother with ethnoexperimetal studies?
Animal welfare, e.g. humane endpoints
Main motives for measuring animal behaviour under laboratory conditions
• explore the neuronal basis for production of behaviour • evaluate the environmental, pharmacological, toxicological, somatic or genetic influences on brain mechanisms and behaviour • animal welfare research
What is an ethnogram?
• what we did in our rat lab • descriptions of the discrete, species-typical behaviour patterns that form the basic behavioural repertoire of the species • registered during a specific time period, condition, ev treatment etc • basic parameters: occurence, latency, frequency, duration
What are basic parameters included in an ethnogram?
• occurence • latency • frequency • duration
What levels of interpretation are there in the context of an ethonogram?
• descriptive –> gnwaing • functional context –> eating • mental state (condition) –> hunger
What is anthropomorphism?
To interpret signals and behaviours in animals by means of a human frame of reference –> humanise them
Which levels of validity should an animal model possess?
• face validity • same symptoms as in humans • construct validity • same underlying mechanism • predictive vailidity • the model allows extrapolation from one species to another, including humans, and from one condition to another
Tests commonly used in mice and rats during the developmental period
• maternal behaviour • ultrasonic vocalisation • home nest finding • freezing • play behaviour
Which parameters can you score in the novel cage test?
• locomotion • inactivity • rearing • grooming • sniffing • intense sniffing
Tests commonly used in mice and rats to test emotional behaviours?
• elevated plus maze • zero maze • open field • light/dark box test
Tests commonly used in mice and rats to assess spatial lerning an memory
• morris water maze • radial arm maze • barnes maze
Tests commonly used in (zebra)fish
• open field • open field with shelter • novel object recognition • novel tank diving test
What can affect my results?
• Animal specific factors • species • strain/line • inbred/outbred • age • sex • experimental design • stress (hormon levels) • laboratory factors (CCC) • light/dark cycle • housing • temperature and humidity • food • ultrasound