Toward a neuroethology of mammalian vision: Ecology and anatomy of rodent visuomotor behavior

Abstract

The great diversity of the niches inhabited by rodents, and the variety of the visual demands of these niches, present an excellent prospect for a comprehensive neuroethological analysis of rodent visuomotor behavior. To this end, rodent taxonomy is reviewed, with special attention to the multiple independent invasions of arboreal, terrestrial, fossorial and aquatic niches by distantly related rodent species. Current work on rat, gerbil and hamster is reviewed with emphasis on visual contributions to naturalistic behaviors such as exploration, foraging, predator detection and conspecific recognition.