The Behavior of the Laboratory Rat: A Handbook with Tests

Abstract

This book contains a wide range of information of huge complexity on rat behavior. The book has three objectives. The first objective is to present an introduction of rat behavior. In choosing the rat as the subject species, the book has made the assumption that this species will remain, as it has in the past, the primary subject used the laboratory investigations of behavior. The second objective is to describe the organization and complexity of rat behavior. The major theme emerging from many lines of research on rat behavior is that understanding the rules of behavioral organization will be central in understanding the structural basis of behavior. The third objective is to update, as much as is possible, previous compendiums of rat behavior. Behavioral neuroscience continues to be a diverse field of research in which there remain many competing experimental methods and hypotheses. The behavioral descriptions in this book are closely tied to the laboratory methods from which they were derived, thus allowing investigators to exploit both the behavior and the methods for their own research. The first part of the book includes sections on natural history, sensory systems, motor systems, regulatory systems, development and parental behavior, social behavior, cognitive functions, and models. The second section is comprised by the major tests used by scientists interested in each domain of behavior.