We present an identification key to the common rodent prey found in owl pellets from the Northwestern (NW) and Southeastern (SE) United States that is based on differences in incisor size (arc diameter) among genera.

The main impacts of insulin favor the peripheral organs. Although it functions as a neuropeptide, insulin possesses also some central effects. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of intrahippocampal infusion of insulin on passive avoidance learning in healthy male rats. Thirty male wistar rats were divided into three groups (n = 10…

Temple Grandin, a university professor and award-winning livestock designer with autism, describes how thinking, for her, means processing a series of photorealistic mental images. Thinking in pictures, according to Grandin, is the only possible mode of thinking for many autistic people: Others think with sound patterns, visual patterns, or long…

Contextual fear conditioning was maintained over a 15-day retention interval suggesting no forgetting of the conditioning experience. However, a more subtle generalization test revealed that, as the retention interval increased, rats showed enhanced generalized fear to an altered context. Preexposure to the training context prior to conditioning,…

Persistent drug seeking/taking behavior involves the consolidation of memory. With each drug use, the memory may be reactivated and reconsolidated to maintain the original memory. During reactivation, the memory may become labile and susceptible to disruption; thus, molecules involved in plasticity should influence acquisition and/or…

Drug addicts make poor decisions. These decision-making deficits have been modeled in addicts and laboratory animals using reversal-learning tasks. However, persistent reversal-learning impairments have been shown in rats and monkeys only after noncontingent cocaine injections. Current thinking holds that to represent the human condition…

The motor control of novice participants is often cognitively demanding and susceptible to interference by other tasks. As people develop expertise, their motor control becomes less susceptible to interference from other tasks. Researchers propose a transition in human motor skill from active control to automaticity. This progression may also be…

Two groups of rats were trained in a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task with a 0-s delay to discriminate sample stimuli that consisted of sequences of tone bursts. For one group, sequences varied in number with total sequence duration controlled. For the other group, total sequence duration, sum of the tone durations, and sum of the gap…

A quantitative computational theory of the operation of the CA3 system as an attractor or autoassociation network is described. Based on the proposal that CA3-CA3 autoassociative networks are important for episodic or event memory in which space is a component (place in rodents and spatial view in primates), it has been shown behaviorally that the…

A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early category-based induction is an artifact of perceptual cues provided by experimenters. We tested these accounts against the prediction that different relations (causal versus non-causal) determine the types of perceptual similarity by which children generalize. Young…

This article provides basic information on how a common species of earthworm, "Eisenia fetida," can be used in the biology classroom as well as a discussion of how to establish and care for a vermicompost bin. We discuss ideas for inquiry activities with the organism and provide a sample-guided inquiry that demonstrates how a long-term,…

In this article, the author describes a short activity which introduces third- to fifth-grade students to animal classification. The Tree of Animal Life activity is a simple, sorting exercise that can help them see a bigger picture. The activity sets the stage for learning about animal taxonomy and introduces the characteristics of various animal…

Scientists have a particularly difficult time explaining warming trends in Antarctica--a region with a relatively short history of scientific observation and a highly variable climate (Clarke et al. 2007). Regardless of the mechanism of warming, however, climate change is having a dramatic impact on Antarctic ecosystems. In this article, the…

This article presents the research conducted by the authors in an Inupiat Eskimo village on the Alaska North Slope and describes the research in two substantive parts. In the first section, the authors present what subsistence hunters and fishers observed concerning changes to seas, lands, and inland lakes and rivers. Then, they mention changes of…

Adelaide Zoo, already home to 3,400 animals representing nearly 300 species of exotic and native mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish, just acquired a new specimen: Homo exhibitionist. For 28 days, four sets of six volunteers get to spend a week living the life of an animal, foraging and playing and partying like it's 1999 million years ago. The…