Early studies by Carlson et al. (1, 2) indicated that individually caged, highly inbred male rats exposed to low levels of daily irradiation for one year paradoxically manifested an increased life expectancy. Other workers (3-5) have also found that some rodent colonies appear to have an increased life span after exposure to low levels of irradiation as well as other paradoxical responses, including a reduced mortality early in life (3, 4, 6), increased resistance to acute challenge doses of irradiation (6-11), and development of an adapted or resistant cell population in certain organs (12, 13). In order to observe these effects on an animal that could be handled singly, but in larger numbers more conveniently than rats, a series of studies was performed on individually caged hybrid male mice.
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Bustad et al. (1965) studied this question.