Lasers Activate Predatory Instincts in Mice

Posted on January 19, 2017

Photo: flickr

The exact brain mechanisms involved in predatory behaviors such as grabbing, biting and hunting remain unknown. However, Ivan de Araujo, a neurobiologist from Yale University, and his research team managed to use a technique called optogenetics to synthetically activate predatory instincts in mice.

Araujo and his colleagues gave mice a virus that made their brains sensitive to light. Afterwards, they activated the amygdala, an area that is responsible for emotions like fear among other things, with a tiny optic fibre. Doing so had elicited predatory behaviors in mice where they tensed their jaws and neck muscles and hunted everything in their paths--from crickets to bottle caps! Interestingly, the mice who were in empty cages behaved as if they were in the process of hunting. Their front legs were positioned as if they were holding food and their mouth made chewing movements despite the lack of any substance.

Additionally, Araujo and his team found that the amount of food eaten was the same, so the light activation has less to do with eating than with hunting. These results imply that the amygdala might be responsible for a much wider array of complex behaviors than initially thought. Kay Tye, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thus believes that the amygdala involves a variety of behaviors, from grooming to fleeing to hunting.


Source material from Scientific American