[A method of assessing rat preference for different acoustic signals when seeking out pups]

A female albino rat was placed into an opened T-maze, and her maternal behaviour was stimulated by pups laid beneath her. Afterwards the pups were removed and impulses of tone (7 and 14 kHz) and tape recording of pup's nociceptive signal were simultaneously presented from different maze alleys. Maternal preference was checked by the predominant direction of seeking during random interchange of the sound sides. In 8 Wistar rats, preference for pup's nociceptive signal was observed.