TITLE:
Behavioural Differences in Brown-Norway and Wild-Type Rats Maintained in Standard or Enriched Environment in Response to Novelty in a Familiarised Environment
AUTHORS:
Wojciech Pisula, Klaudia Modlinska, Anna Chrzanowska, Rafał Stryjek
KEYWORDS:
Domestication, Stimulus Seeking, Information Seeking, Environmental Enrichment, Rat Behavior, Wild-Type Rat, Laboratory Rat, WWCPS
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.6 No.3,
February
12,
2015
ABSTRACT: Maintaining
animals in an enriched environment may have different effects on animals
depending on their background. Wild-type rats, such as WWCPS (Warsaw Wild
Captive Pisula Stryjek) rats, are at an early stage of adaptation to laboratory
conditions, and we can hypothesise that enriched laboratory environment
provides them with conditions much closer to a natural habitat than standard
laboratory cages. The WWCPS rats responded to novelty by orienting their
behaviour towards the source of change, followed by rapid habituation of that
response. The laboratory rats responded similarly to WWCPS rats immediately
after the change, but their increased activity in that section of the
experimental cage was not subjected to habituation. We propose, that for
animals at early stages of domestication, information-seeking is more important
in the regulation of their behaviour than it is for fully domesticated animals.
In the latter, it is the stimulus-seeking that dominates behaviour regulation. Laboratory rats, and WWCPS rats showed
different profiles of response to maintaining in the enriched laboratory
conditions.