Hi,
I had a weird experience were after finishing testing a mice, in a zero maze it was returned into its home cage with its usual two other cage mates mice. After some time ( 5 min) the mice were fighting intensively together and I had to separate them. The same experience happened when I returned another mice after a forced swim task the day after. Could someone, please provide some information? My mice will be tested for various anxiety tasks on successive days after an anxiety-induced experience and I am afraid that the fighting can interfere with my anxiety tasks.
Thank very much.
Hassiba
Anxiety is also expressed in forms of aggression in case you did not confront the mice with an intruder in the group. We also recorded anxious behavior in many ways in mice e.g. in thigmotaxis.
Are these male mice? Only male siblings should be housed together after weaning. Once separated, male mice should be housed individually, otherise they will fight even without having undergone anxiety. You can try using females or separet your males before the test and keep them separate afterwards.
Thank you Beatrice and Gregory, for your constructive input. They are male mice probably not siblings. As a part of habituation, I will house them separately before and after the anxiety task. I indeed tried it and found that it is working well.