Аннотация:Animals of most vertebrate species navigate in complex three-dimensional environments in theirnatural habitats. Although most terrestrial rodents are burrowing animals, some inhabiting forest biotopesand are captured in traps placed in the arboreal layer. This publication aims to describe a simple experimentalsetup for studying vertical activity and other behavior in several rodent species from natural populations in alaboratory setting. The results of these tests are also presented. Food reinforcement and the induction ofactive avoidance responses were employed to stimulate climbing behavior. This setup has proven suitable forassessing the ability of murine rodents to move vertically along objects of varying textures. These tests demonstratedthat rodent species inhabiting forest biotopes appear to engage in vertical locomotion more frequentlyand are therefore better adapted to it than species residing in open spaces on soil surfaces. We hope that thisdevice will be useful for studying the three-dimensional spatial behavior of other rodent species.
