Neuroanatomy of the Cerebellum of Grasscutter and African Giant Rat

The African giant rats and grasscutters are the African rodents with good potentials as laboratory animals, and their meat, particularly the grasscutter, has an excellent taste and nutritionally superior to others livestock. They are the most common rodents undergoing domestication in Africa, belonging to different families with ecological diversity. Despite the popular focus of attention on these indigenous rodents, difficulty still exist in understanding their instinct wild behaviour due to scanty information on their brain structural morphology. The purpose of this research was to provide reference data on the cerebellar structure and relate it to functions in the life animal. Attempts were made to calculate the encephalization quotient (EQ), that is, the ability of the animal to cope with challenges in its environment, and the cerebellar foliation patterns at the midsagittal plane and correlate that to their behavioural differences in the wild and in captivity. Also, the cytoarchitectural cortical cells and the deep cerebellar nuclei located on their respective zones were described in this book. The book is relevant for neuroscientist, researchers and medical science students.