Maze. A maze is a semi-natural environment consisting of a number of pathways and choice points. Most mazes are separated into a start box, alley segment, choice point, and goal box. Performance can be quantified in several ways, the most common being the time needed to leave the start box, speed in negotiating the maze, and number of blind alleys entered. There are more than 100 different maze patterns. The maze is an extremely useful and versatile apparatus. A major drawback of the maze is that the animal is usually handled between runs through the maze and the maze is often unautomated and therefore labor intensive. Mazes can be used to measure learning in individual animals or in groups of animals. An example of a group performance maze can be seen in the ant maze. A unique maze for an individual subject is shown in the second example. Here an insect is placed on a foam representation of a "Y" shape (or "Y" maze). The maze is unique in that handling is eliminated between trials.