Animal Behavior Research Blog Posts

Walking in circles - the exploratory activity of Drosophila

Like rats and mice, fruit flies avoid open spaces and stay close to physical borders. In rats and mice this is caused by fear to be out in the open and preference for close contact with borders.

How to know if an animal is nauseated

Nausea is a prominent factor influencing the quality of life for patients undergoing chemotherapy. That is why it is useful to study the nauseating side effects of therapies or the anti-nauseating potential of drugs.

Zebrafish and withdrawal

Recent work done by Khor et al. (2011) looked at the effect of mitragynine on behavior in zebrafish going through withdrawal after chronic morphine exposure. The effects of Mitragynine on morphine-withdrawn zebrafish.

Three ways to test hallucinogens on zebrafish

Hallucinogenic drugs (psychedelics) have a growing significance in biopsychiatric research. Zebrafish are a popular animal model and seem highly sensitive to various drugs of abuse.

Bed bug behavior - What smell can tell

Bed bugs are on the rebound in developed countries. Traditionally, bed bugs are controlled with pesticides. However, traps with attractive human body odors are a promising alternative.

The search for robust fear inducing stimuli in zebrafish research

Zebrafish behavioral research has grown by leaps and bounds, and behavioral paradigms are being developed with the aim of better understanding mechanisms that might underlie aberrant behavioral phenotypes.

Zebrafish research: growing demands in South America

It was at the Society for Neuroscience last November that I was invited to speak at the second annual LAZEN meeting held last December in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Three examples of swimming rats in traumatic brain injury research (TBI)

The Morris water maze and EthoVision, a validated solution to investigate learning and memory in rats and mice.

Recent applications of locomotor and gait analysis

Stem cell research is a promising area of research for spinal cord injury. With 1,25 million individuals suffering from chronic spinal cord injury in the US alone, new treatment approaches are necessary.

Horses: behavioral research, physiology and biomechanics

Besides the study of the relation between humans and popular pets such as cats and dogs, human-horse interaction is an increasingly popular subject of science.

Behavioral assays establish zebrafish in drug screening

Zebrafish are increasingly swimming into the view of large-scale drug screening projects. Behavioral screens can be used as a first-line detection tool for new drug effects, and their popularity continues to grow.

Observing social behavior and communication in wild elephants

A trunk-to-mouth greeting ritual. Yes. We are talking about elephants here.