Locomotor patterns in the exploring house mouse (Mus musculus)

For animals, home range exploration is a learning process during which the animal uses sensory-motor activity to incrementally map properties of a future home range into long-term memory to be used by the animal subsequently for efficient navigation within the explored range. Most research on home range orientation focuses on the navigational performance of the animal with pre-existing knowledge–after exploration. Typically, exploration behavior appears random, but there must be some systematic component to result in the animal acquiring spatial knowledge. Few studies have looked at the spatiotemporal pattern of exploration for any part that is not random. Using the house mouse as the model species, we study exploration behavior in a radial arm maze, with the nest box in the center. With these spatial constraints, it is easier to separate the random and systematic components of exploration. We found that the mice tend to avoid exploring an arm of the maze previously visited one or two times earlier, yet the choices among any other arms not previously visited are almost indistinguishable from random.