Fluorescence redistribution after photobleaching has been used to show that a cytoplasmic GFP fusion is immobile in dormant spores of Bacillus subtilis but becomes freely mobile in germinated spores in which cytoplasmic water content has increased approximately 2-fold. The GFP immobility in dormant spores is not due to the high levels of dipicolinic acid in the spore cytoplasm, because GFP was ...

We evaluated individual behavioural patterns of isopods expressed as tonic immobility following some intrusive treatments. Common rough woodlice, Porcellioscaber, were kept individually in plastic boxes and tested for tonic immobility repeatedly. Reactivity, sensitivity (number of stimuli needed to respond), and endurance of tonic immobility (TI) according three types of treatments (touch, sque...

During growth (27 to 75 days of age), a total of 384 rabbits were kept in 72 individual cages, 48 bicellular cages (2 rabbits/cage) and 24 collective cages (9 rabbits/cage). To evaluate the effects of the housing system on the fear level and behavioural patterns of rabbits at the two ages (39 to 45 days and 66 to 73 days), a tonic immobility test and an open-field test were conducted and their ...

Tonic immobility (Crozier, 1923), often more popularly known as "playing possum," "animal hypnosis," or even "feigning death," is exhibited by a great variety of animals. Rabaud (1919) discusses at length the condition as seen in arthropods. He points out that most arthropods have regions of the body which seem to be the loci of tactually excitable reflexes causing the animal to pass into a sta...

I.-"Death feigning," otherwise "playing 'possum") or even "animal hypnosis," better termed tonic immobility,l is shown to a striking degree by a great variety of animals.2'3'4'5 Certain forms from planarians to mammals may be caused to assume a state of rigid immobility by tactual stimulation of particular regions of the body or by other forms of manipulation. In the case of many of the higher ...

Catatonia, long viewed as a motor disorder, may be better understood as a fear response, akin to the animal defense strategy tonic immobility (after G. G. Gallup & J. D. Maser, 1977). This proposal, consistent with K. L. Kahlbaum's (1874/1973) original conception, is based on similarities between catatonia and tonic immobility ("death feint") as well as evidence that catatonia is associated wit...