60-Hz electric fields: detection by female rats.
Female rats were trained to detect a vertical, 60-Hz electric field using the same apparatus and procedure we used previously to study behavioral detection of the field by male rats. Each rat was trained individually to press a lever in the presence of the field and not to press in its absence. Correct detections occasionally produced a food pellet. The probability of detecting the field increased as field strength increased. The threshold of detection--ie, the field strength required for detections at a probability of 0.5 after correction for errors--varied among rats between 3 and 10 kV/m. Behavioral detection by female rats was indistinguishable from that by male rats.
D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D055590:Electromagnetic Phenomena; D005260:Female; D011601:Psychophysics; D051381:Rats