“…In fact, it has been shown that marble-burying persists over repeated exposure, even when avoidance of the marbles is possible and after animals have been habituated to the presence of marbles in their home cage environments for extended periods (Njung'e & Handley, 1991b;Thomas et al, 2009). Moreover, the facts that marble-burying correlates poorly with the outcomes of other classical experimental tests of anxiety (Sanathara et al, 2018;Savy et al, 2015;Thomas et al, 2009; although see also Greene-Schloesser et al, 2011) and that it is subject to significant between-strain variation (Angoa-PĂŠrez, Kane, Briggs, Francescutti, & Kuhn, 2013;Egashira et al, 2013;Nicolas et al, 2006;Thomas et al, 2009) further suggest that marble-burying as it is normally carried out in the lab-that is, not based on individual differences in behavior, but rather to characterize group differences in supposed abnormal burying behavior, mostly following drug intervention-represents an inherent, rather than a neophobic or anxiety-related, behavioral phenotype. As such, the MBT has since been employed to model the purported behavioral manifestations of OCD-that is, seemingly purposeless repetition Gaikwad, Parle, Kumar, & Gaikwad, 2010;Iijima, Kurosu, & Chaki, 2010;Taylor et al, 2017;Umathe, Bhutada, Dixit, & Shende, 2008;Umathe et al, 2012); in most cases, however, this approach is also unjustified, as will be explained.…”