Jumping

Overview and Meaning

Jumping is a stereotypy, a repetitive, unvarying behavior lacking apparent goal or function. A mouse can jump about 2-3 times per second, momentarily pausing between jumps.

Description

Jumping is a repetitious upright motion towards the cage top. Sometimes when rearing, mice may jump up towards the cage lid.

Jumping can be distinguished as follows:

  • Single jumps are a perfectly normal behavior.
  • To classify this behavior as a stereotypy, there will be an intense cluster of jumps (more than 20 per minute) or the mouse will do a smaller number of jumps but in multiple consecutive sessions.
  • A jumping session ends when the mouse stops jumping and moves away from the jumping site and performs another behavior for a significant amount of seconds before returning to jumping.

Classification

Contexts

Variants

None

Jumping is a form of stereotypy.

Stereotypies include:

  1. Bar-mouthing
  2. Circling
  3. Jumping
  4. Looping
  5. Route Tracing
  6. Twirling
  7. Wiping

Stereotypy is part of

Abnormal Behaviors

Abnormal behaviors include:

  1. Infanticide
  2. Barbering
  3. Stereotypies
  4. Ulcerative Dermatitis

 

Stanford Department of Comparative Medicine presents

A Comprehensive Ethogram of the Laboratory Mouse