Hearing in the Rat at High Frequencies

Studies on the nutritional basis of abnormal behavior in albino rats. II. Further analysis of the effects of inanition and vitamin B1 on convulsive seizures.

“…The seizures observed throughout the present experiments showed no departure from those previously described by the authors (6,11). Most investigators now apparently agree that an acoustic stimulus is the important inciting agent (1,3,6,9,12). Furthermore, there seems to be little question that susceptibility to the sound-induced seizures can be greatly altered by changing the physiological condition of the animal.…”

Test of aversiveness of a 39-kHz tone to hooded rats

“…To reject the hypothesis that the tone was inaudible to the subject, the tone was paired with inescapable electric shock. Their results showed the tone to be audible to their rats, a finding which agrees with those reported by Gould and Morgan (1941). Cunningham and Anderson (1974) suggested that the 39-kHz tone may be aversive in other situations (cf.…”

Ultrasounds and maternal behavior in small rodents

“…Therefore, the Allin and Banks data can also be expected to contain a certain amount of calls elicited by tactile stimulation, although the dominant effect was probably due to cold. Gould and Morgan (1941) found that adult rats could be trained t o respond to auditory signals ranging from 1-40 kHz (upper limit of their sound generator). The animals performed poorly with sounds below 8 kHz, but improved considerably with increasing sound frequency.…”

“…The existence of this communication has not been long known, although many reports during the last 20-30 years have indicated that small rodents produce and detect ultrasounds and have implicated the use of the sounds in echolocation or communication. For instance, Gould and Morgan (1941) were able to train rats to respond to high frequency sounds. Schleidt (1948Schleidt ( , 1951 reported that the bank vole is able to emit ultrasounds and that the animal can respond to tones up to 60 kHz.…”