Juvenile social play behavior is one of the most important developmental behaviors for many animals, including humans. Social play facilitates the development of a variety of adult behaviors, including adult sex behavior and aggression. In this study, we redistributed the rat pups into home cages that were either single-sex female, single-sex male, or mixed sex on postnatal day (PN) 13. For this preliminary report, juvenile play behavior was observed in both focal observation and paired encounter paradigms from PN25-PN30. We hypothesized that the sex composition of the litter would have an effect on juvenile play behavior and our preliminary analyses support this hypothesis.
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24 June 2022
Litter sex composition has sex and context-specific effects on juvenile play behavior in Sprague-Dawley rats
Miye Aoki-Kramer,
Robin Forbes-Lorman
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BIOS
Vol. 92 • No. 4
December 2021
Vol. 92 • No. 4
December 2021
home cage
mixed-sex
rough and tumble play
sex difference