标题: Wild Animals Enjoy a Running Wheel [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-21-2014 08:22 标题: Wild Animals Enjoy a Running Wheel James Gorman, Mice Run for Fun, Not Just Work, Research Say. New York Times, May 21, 2014. www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/scien ... t-for-lab-work.html
("If an exercise wheel sits in a forest, will mice run on it? Every once in a while, science asks a simple question and gets a straightforward answer. In this case, yes, they will")
Note:
(a) "Johanna H Meijer at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands * * * said Konrad Lorenz, the great-grandfather of animal behavior studies, once mentioned in a letter that some of his caged rats had escaped and then returned to his garden to use running wheels placed there. But, Dr Meijer said, the Lorenz observation 'was one sentence.'”
(i) Leiden University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden_University
("located in the city of Leiden. is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange [1533-1584], leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War" (1568-1648)
(ii) Konrad Lorenz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz
(1903-1989; Austrian; Working with geese, he rediscovered the principle of imprinting (originally described by Douglas Spalding [1841–1877, English] in the 19th century; 1973 Nobel Prize)
(b) "For the experiment, the wheels were enclosed so that small animals could come and go but so that larger animals could not knock them [wheels] over."
(c) "They [research results] were released online Tuesday [May 21] in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B."
Meijer JH and Robbers Y, Wheel running in the wild. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 281: _-_ (online publication May 21, 2014)
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1786/20140210
(abstract: "Bout lengths of running wheel behaviour in the wild match those for captive mice")
(d) "And plenty of people do all they can to avoid jogging, cycling and elliptical machines. Presumably, the same is true of wild mice. While some were setting the wheel on fire with their exertions, others, out of camera range, may have been sprawled out on the mouse equivalent of a lounge chair, shaking their whiskers in dismay and disbelief."
(i) exercise machine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_machine
(section 2.3 Elliptical machines: an elliptical motion (hence the machine name).
(ii) "shaking their whiskers in dismay and disbelief"