Abstract
What would your first reaction be if you saw a lion in the wild? You might not even think about it before you start to back away. Your response to a lion might be very different from encountering a chimpanzee. So, what controls these different responses?
To find out, we used two related species of mice that live in different habitats. We showed the mice a fake predator threat and then watched their behavior. We looked at the activity in a part of the brain called the escape center. Then, we turned the escape center on and off. We saw that one species of mouse froze, but the other ran away when threatened. Our findings traced the origin of these behaviors to a single part of the brain. This area had a different role in causing the behaviors between the two species. These differences may have been the result of natural selection.
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