Hoarding behavior of AKR, C57BL/6 mice and their F1 in their home living space: an automatic recording technique.

Earlier genetic analysis of food hoarding behavior in mice used test situations in which animals were allowed to hoard food only during short time periods. This paper describes a technique to measure food hoarding over long time periods. Small discs of standard food are equipped with a steel clip and each passage of a mouse bringing such a food disc from the food search enclosure to the nest is detected by an electromagnetic sounding lead connected to a pen recorder. Preliminary results show that female mice begin to hoard earlier than males; one of the two reciprocal F1 has a shorter latency to hoard than the other one. Results also show differences between two parental inbred strains and their reciprocal F1 for the light-dark distribution of hoarding.