Abstract
Rats were found superior to gerbils in acquisition of step-down passive avoidance in each of three experiments. In Experiment 1 size of the safe platform was varied and rats showed comparable passive avoidance on both large and small platforms while gerbils were reliably superior in passive avoidance on the large platform relative to the small. Experiment 2 revealed that gerbils took significantly longer than rats to reach a 180-sec passive avoidance criterion, although the two species did not differ in the number of shocks received prior to reaching criterion. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that platform confinement prior to training retarded passive avoidance acquisition in gerbils while having no effect on rat performance. The results of all three experiments were interpreted in terms of species differences in exploratory activity in aversive situations. Specifically, observed species differences in passive avoidance were attributed to a stronger exploratory tendency in gerbils relative to rats.
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