Purpose To provide a multifunctional animal behavior experiment system based on an open source sharing protocol, which can be used for conditioned fear, active avoidance and other behavioral observation, training and testing.
Method This system is composed of an experimental box, a camera, a stimulation circuit and control software, which can record and quantitatively analyze a variety of experimental animal behaviors under unattended conditions.
Results After the system was set up in two universities, common animal behavior experiments including conditional fear and active avoidance were tested and the experimental results were statistically analyzed. Experimental data shows that the conditioned fear behavior and active avoidance behavior of Sprague Dawley rats can be stably trained in this system.
Conclusion A set of open source multifunctional animal behavior experimental system has been successfully developed. Since the overall design of the system is completely open source from hardware to software, and is easy to use and expandable, it is conducive to the wide promotion of the system, lowers the entry barrier for experiments, and benefits all animal experimenters.