1. The Social Use of Space 9 



1. Trip-Terminations in an Unstructured One-Dimensional 

 Habitat 



The initial investigation focused upon examination of the distances from 

 the home compartment at which nonvacillating trips terminated in the 

 unstructured alley. "Unstructured" denotes the absence along the alley 

 of any stimuli likely to elicit responses and so induce a rat to stop. Rats 

 were placed in the alley during the middle of the afternoon, a time of 

 minimal activity within their normal 24-hour rhythm of activity. And yet 

 when placed in the alley every rat exhibited a 2- to 3-hour period of hyper- 

 activity. Further details of the decay curve of this hyperactivity are dis- 

 cussed in Section III, A, 3. 



For 73 rats complete records (Table la) were available for all trip- 



Tablk la 

 Number of Trips Terminated with Reference to Distance from Home 



" Only nonvacillating trips included. 



* Vacillating trips and trips at whose end an object was transported home are not 

 included since the termination of trips determined was solely by the number of tran.s- 

 I)ortt'd objects. 



