RESUMO
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.
