Abstract:
House mice (Mus musculus) are omnivores and have an innate predatory instinct for small invertebrates like crickets. Our lab is interested in the evolutionary, behavioral, and neural mechanisms underlying hunting behaviors. In this talk, I will discuss the lab's neuroethological approaches to studying hunting at multiple levels: in feral mice on Skokholm island, free-living “re-wilded” lab mice in large outdoor enclosures, and in the lab. I will spend the majority of the time talking about our lab work, where we have created a large arena where we hide crickets and let our mice find them using auditory cues (chirps), focusing on what we have learned from our first cohorts of animals, and where we’re headed next

www.janelia.org/lab/dennis-lab