A. 1. Brief Assignment

Brief Assignment #1 – Animal Handling

In this week’s lab you learned how to appropriately handle a rat and observed how to give an injection properly. Injecting substances into a research animal is one of the more common occurrences in behavioural neuroscience and is an essential skill for success in the lab. Delivery of anaesthetics, drugs of abuse, antibiotics, etc. all rely on your ability to administer the substance safely and in the correct amount. Dosage is calculated as milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) of body weight. Typically, the drug you will be working with is pre-prepared at a certain concentration (mg/ml). In order to keep the dosage constant across different animals, the volume of the injection needs to be altered based on the animal’s weight (ml/kg).

Your assignment is to create a dosage chart for rats weighing between 300 and 400g in 10g intervals. Be sure to include an appropriate caption below your dosage chart. The drug you will be injecting needs to be administered at a dose of 25 mg/kg and is supplied at a concentration of 40 mg/ml.

Short Assignment #1 Rubric

20 possible marks

A) Dosage Chart
• Is the data correct?	14
• Is the data presented in a clear and appropriate manner?	6
Total:	20