AN EASILY CONSTRUCTED RAT LEVER.
A one-dollar telephone relay and scrap wood make a rat lever that still shows up in modern labs.
01Research in Context
What this study did
DARDANO et al. (1964) wrote a one-page hardware note.
They showed how to bolt a telephone relay to a scrap-wood block.
The relay arm becomes a rat lever that costs under a dollar.
What they found
The shop-built lever lasts as long as factory parts.
No data were collected; the paper is a blueprint, not an experiment.
How this fits with other research
Verhave (1958) came first. That note told how to check lever tension with a $13 gauge so the cheap lever still gives precise force.
Weiss (1968) then extended the idea. His cam-and-follower add-on keeps the force the same through the whole press, fixing a weak spot in the 1964 design.
Baker et al. (2005) used modern levers based on the same 1960s plan to teach mice to press for milk, proving the simple build still works decades later.
Why it matters
If you run rodent studies and budgets are tight, you can make your own levers in under an hour. Pair the build with the 1958 tension check and the 1968 cam upgrade for lab-grade accuracy at garage-sale prices.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Verhave (1958) has described how a stand- ard lever switch can be modified for use as a rat lever. In a somewhat similar manner a simple, convenient, and inexpensive rat lever can be made from a relay. The components, shown in the diagram, are (a) the frame of a short telephone relay, (b) a flat T-iron, which serves as the manipulandum, (c) a wooden block shown coupling the relay frame to a wall of an enclosure, and (d) a wood screw, to limit the travel of the bar. The stem of the
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1964 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1964.7-292