Training pouched rats to find people

Abstract

Giant African pouched rats equipped with video cameras may be a tenable option for locating living humans trapped under debris from collapsed structures. In the present study, 5 pouched rats were trained to contact human targets in a simulated collapsed building and to return to the release point after hearing a signal to do so. During test sessions, each rat located human targets more often than it located similar-sized inanimate targets on which it had not previously been trained and spent more time within 1 m of the human target than within 1 m of the other targets. Overall, the rats found humans, plastic bags containing clothes, and plastic bags without clothes on 83%, 37%, and 11% of trials, respectively. These findings suggest that using pouched rats to search for survivors in collapsed structures merits further attention.

Assessing the impact of psychotropic medication changes on challenging behavior of individuals with intellectual disabilities

“…Using the criteria described by Cox and Virues-Ortega (2015), we categorized participant FA outcomes after each medication change along two dimensions: changes in overall rate of behavior or addition or subtraction of an identified function. For one participant’s behavior (i.e., Ron’s SIB), medication had a suppressing or reducing effect as the rate of Ron’s SIB seemingly decreased across medication phases.…”

Ophthalmic examination findings and intraocular pressures in wild‐caught African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys spp.)

“…They have helped identify many false‐negative samples over the past few years, and a recent study revealed a 44% increase in detections when using the giant pouched rats as a second line following light microscopy evaluation . More recent studies utilizing the extraordinary olfactory ability of giant pouched rats are focused on urban search‐and‐rescue training such as with collapsed buildings …”

“…8,10,11 More recent studies utilizing the extraordinary olfactory ability of giant pouched rats are focused on urban search-and-rescue training such as with collapsed buildings. 8,12,13 The purpose of this study was to describe ophthalmic examination findings and intraocular pressures (IOPs) in wild-caught African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei and gambianus) from Tanzania and Ghana.…”

Repetitive Behavior in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Clinical and Translational Findings

“…A second critical expansion of our conceptualization of repetitive behavior comes from the recognition that discrete repetitive behaviors are exemplars of what appears to be a larger, generalized pattern of rigid, inflexible behavior or lack of response variability across multiple behavioral classes (Rodriguez and Thompson 2015). A striking example of this comes from eye-tracking studies that show a restricted and repetitive pattern of visual attention to a pictorial array of nonsocial items in children with ASD compared to typically developing children (Sasson et al 2008).…”