Behaviour analysis of the effect of fox pheromones on mice

Abstract

In the current thesis we wanted to study the effect of synthetic TMT, similar to the TMT found naturally in fox faeces, on fear response in mice. Several studies have previously suggested them to have a good ability to induce fear in rodents, especially in rats. We wanted to see if these studies were reliable anxiety stimulators, also in mice. For the experiment we used five different odours: distilled water as a control, citronella oil as a known neutral odour to rodents, TMT in 50% concentraion, TMT in 100% concentration, and also MetOH, which is a noisome odour without any specific relevance to rodents. We wanted to evaluate the difference between using a high concentration TMT versus using lower concentration TMT, as the high concentration one may act as an irritating odour rather than a fear-responsive odour. We placed the mice in an open-field box and exposed them to each odour for 5 minute intervals. After each odour they had resting days. We videotaped and used Noldus Observer XT program to evaluate their behaviour.