Hi all,

I never used rats: I decided as an undergraduate that I never would work with 
animals that had teeth.

So instead, I ran toothless animals through mazes ... fruit flies (genus: 
Drosophila). My dissertation advisor was Jerry Hirsch, one of the pioneers of 
behavior genetics. Sometime around 1959 or 1960 (if I remember correctly), he 
developed these mazes in order to measure the responses of fruit flies to 
gravity (geotaxis) and, sometime later, light (phototaxis).

I just searched Google images and was amazed to discover that there is not one 
good picture of a geotaxis maze. The best I could come up with is here: 
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2494/3931247773_02bf3ea852.jpg  This maze does 
not look at all like the typical mazes. I'll have to post some good images of 
the mazes on one of my web sites, I guess.

I was very happy to finally get one of the geotaxis mazes I used in graduate 
school, which was given to me by Hirsch's last graduate student a couple of 
years ago. Ah, the good old days, although at the time, I thought that the 
terror would never end....

Best,
Jeff
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D.
SCC: Professor of Psychology
MCCCD: General Studies Faculty Representative
PSY 101 Website: http://sccpsy101.wordpress.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scottsdale Community College
9000 E. Chaparral Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
Office: SB-123
Phone: (480) 423-6213
Fax: (480) 423-6298


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