Post-Doctoral Researcher Dr. Lucia Amendola, PhD student Anna Ratuski, and Dr. Dan Weary have recently published an article in PloS One on the individual differences in rat sensitivity to CO2. While CO2 is commonly used for rodent euthanasia, this gas elicits negative emotions in rats, but the negative experience is different between individuals. Authors found that individual differences in aversion to CO2 were highly repeatable but unrelated to motivation for sweet rewards, safety, and gains. They conclude that individual differences in rat aversion to CO2 reflect variation in CO2 sensitivity.
Read the full paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.024534
