Abstract
The objective of this study was to describe the nature of the inheritance of jumping as a behavioral trait and to analyze quantitatively the jumping height as a measure of vigor in two subspecies of mice. Two subspecies of mice, Yonakuni wild mouse (Y) and $CF_{{\sharp}1}$ laboratory mouse (C), were used as the parental types. Reciprocal mating between these two subspecies was made to produce subsequently the first and second generations. The first generation was $F_1$ (YC) resulting from $Y\;male{\times}C\;female$, and $F_1{^\prime}$ (CY) from $C\;male{\times}Y\;female$. The second generation $F_2$ (YCYC) was from mating $F_1{\times}F_1$ and $F_2{^\prime}$ (CYCY) from $F_1{^\prime}{\times}F_1{^\prime}$. Individuals were treated with a set of direct current shock apparatus at six weeks of age to evoke jumping. The results showed that the ratio between jumping and non jumping mice (J: NJ) for C was 0%:100% (0:1), which means that all C did not jump throughout the experiment, whereas Y was 68%:32% (2:1); and the $F_1$ and $F_2$ showed 65%:35% (2:1) and 51%:49% (1:1), respectively. All $F_1{^\prime}$ and $F_2{^\prime}$ individuals jumped as indicated by the ratio 100%:0% (1:0) for both these two genetic groups. Of the jumped mice, average height of the first three jumping observed for pooled sexes in Y, $F_1$, $F_2$, $F_1{^\prime}$ and $F_2{^\prime}$ were 19.3 cm, 19.3 cm, 18.0 cm, 19.9 cm and 16.4 cm, respectively. The distribution of jumping height showed a tendency to be a normal distribution. The jumping activity and jumping height may be affected by some major genes and polygenes, respectively.