Reliability of Selected Swimming Endurance Tests for Laboratory Rats |
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| Authors: | Donald H Hardin |
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| Institution: | University of Texas at El Paso , El Paso , Texas , USA |
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| Abstract: | Abstract Endurance testing of small animals has been evident in the physical education literature in recent years (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). Probably there will be an increase in the use of the laboratory rat in exercise testing, as the animal lends itself well to experimentations involving the effects of exercise during the formative periods on the adult, the effects of exercise on food consumption or voluntary exercise, the effects of radiation on endurance, and environmental effects on exercise. It is felt that standard methods of endurance testing with the laboratory rat should be developed to aid the investigator undertaking a study using the rat as an experimental animal. This study was an attempt to determine the reliability of some of the better known methods of measuring the swimming endurance of the laboratory rat. One of the following four tests was given to each group of 20 albino rats, trained for 5 weeks with a swimming regimen which progressed until each animal could swim for a period of 2 hr. without removal from the swimming tank. The water temperature was held at 30 C (± 2 degrees C). The tank used for the training was a circular one, 30 in. in diameter. After the 5-week conditioning period the rats were given the appropriate test, then retested after a one day rest, and then destroyed. A new group of animals was used for each endurance test. |
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