THE FUNCTION OF EXPLORATION OF THE RAT

Wild rats once they leave the nest, are subject to predation, and their principal means of avoiding predators are the uses of pathways under cover, and flight to a burrow or other place of concealment. These actions depend on previous experience of the topography of their living space. Given such experience, they can run from any one point to any other, by the shortest route and in the last possible time . Rats are more vulnerable to predations by cat if they are in unfamiliar surroundings. But exploration does not lead only to learning where cover and nest sites are; it is accompanied by sampling of the edible or potable materials encountered , and so a rat is regularly informed of sources of food and water.

A further consequence of general movements is that odor trail are left on the routers regularly used, and these are detected by other rats.

The word ‘random ‘ is sometimes applied to exploratory rat behavior. A more appreciate term would be “unpredictable”; but even this is misleading. The directions of rat’s movement, even in unknown terrain, is influenced in an orderly way by many of the features it encounters. The inorganic stimuli may be tactile, visual, or olfactory . A similar variety of stimuli may be provide by other rats.

Thigmotaxis, formally studied in young rats by Crozier, has usually been regarded as behavior which appears regardless of the conditions in which the rats is reared or of any particular sort of experience. But Patrick & Laughlin raised rats in an environment without opaque walls, and they did not develop a tendency to move close to a wall.

Other guiding stimuli are more likely to lead to exposure; the odors of food or of other rats habit have an attractive effect which may overcome the shelter-seeking tendency.