Description
The subterranean Ansell’s mole-rat (Fukomys anselli) can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, likely to use it as a cue for orientation in its dark habitat. The omnipresence of the Earth’s magnetic field as a directional reference raises the question of whether its sudden absence would cause changes in mole-rats’ behaviour. Recent advances in automated animal tracking and the unsupervised quantification of behavioural dynamics allow for a precise, unbiased and efficient analysis of animal behaviour. Here, we recorded the behaviour of Ansell’s mole-rats freely moving in a circular arena in the presence or absence of an Earth-strength magnetic field using a high-speed camera. The movements of the animals were tracked using the animal tracking toolbox SLEAP, which created keypoint data for selected body parts. The keypoint data was then used for behaviour discovery and quantification using the keypoint-MoSeq toolbox. This analysis revealed distinct behavioural syllables and their frequency and dynamics, which we compared between the presence and the absence of the Earth’s magnetic field.
