food intake

Many food intake events (= food uptake events) are too small for legacy "food intake measurement systems" or metabolic phenotyping systems to detect. Each of these feeding events corresponds to a neurological signal to feed, even if the actual amount is small. As such, they convey important behavioral information.

Mice are communal beasts, just like rats. They live in groups, and separating them - as required for measuring food intake / food uptake or energy expenditure - stresses them, elevating cortisol levels and leading to to a host of unwanted side-effects. Using the right technology, however, obtaining separate food uptake recordings from communally housed mice is straightforward. This short article demonstrates just such an application, combining a Promethion mass measurement module (2 mg resolution) with RFID.

Want to measure food uptake by your experimental animal, such as a rat or mouse? There's the easy wrong way and the even easier right way (the latter with a smidgeon more tech). Plus a tickler.