Abstract
Rough-and-tumble play or play fighting is an important experience in the juvenile period of many species of mammals, as it facilitates the development of social skills, and for some species, play fighting is retained into adulthood as a tool for assessing and managing social relationships. Laboratory rats have been a model species for studying the neurobiology of play fighting and its key developmental and social functions. However, play fighting interactions are complex, involving competition and cooperation; therefore, no single measure to quantify this behavior is able to capture all its facets. Therefore, in this paper, we present a multilayered framework for scoring all the relevant facets of play that can be affected by experimental manipulations and the logic of how to match what is measured with the question being asked.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e337 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-28 |
| Journal | Current Protocols |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank Louk Vanderschuren (Utrecht University) for providing the facilities to conduct the preliminary experiment on the effects of the amount of play on the microstructure of play (?Combining measurement types?). Although developing the framework presented in this paper has taken years and thus overlaps many grant cycles, the most recent support has been received through grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to DRE (grant number: 2018-05777) and SMP (grant number: 2018-03706), and a NOW-ENW Veni grant to EJMA (grant number: 016.Veni.181.039). Moreover, as the work presented herein required decades to develop and was scrutinized by many institutional oversight committees, the most recent work used to illustrate the methods described was approved by the Dutch Central Authority for Scientific Procedures on Animals (CCD) and the Animal Ethics Committee of Utrecht University (License: AVD108002015189 with protocols 189-1-07, 189-1-08, and 189-1-09). It was conducted in agreement with Dutch laws (Wet op de Dierproeven, 1996) and European regulations (Guideline 86/609/EEC) and followed guidelines provided by the Canadian Council of Animal Care, approved by the Institutional Animal Welfare Committee of the University of Lethbridge (protocols #1201 and #1089).
Funding Information:
The authors thank Louk Vanderschuren (Utrecht University) for providing the facilities to conduct the preliminary experiment on the effects of the amount of play on the microstructure of play (“Combining measurement types”). Although developing the framework presented in this paper has taken years and thus overlaps many grant cycles, the most recent support has been received through grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to DRE (grant number: 2018‐05777) and SMP (grant number: 2018‐03706), and a NOW‐ENW Veni grant to EJMA (grant number: 016.Veni.181.039). Moreover, as the work presented herein required decades to develop and was scrutinized by many institutional oversight committees, the most recent work used to illustrate the methods described was approved by the Dutch Central Authority for Scientific Procedures on Animals (CCD) and the Animal Ethics Committee of Utrecht University (License: AVD108002015189 with protocols 189‐1‐07, 189‐1‐08, and 189‐1‐09). It was conducted in agreement with Dutch laws (Wet op de Dierproeven, 1996) and European regulations (Guideline 86/609/EEC) and followed guidelines provided by the Canadian Council of Animal Care, approved by the Institutional Animal Welfare Committee of the University of Lethbridge (protocols #1201 and #1089).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC
Keywords
- social networks
- social play
- sociocognitive skills
- ultrasonic vocalizations