The Mouse that cried

Try out Friendfeed. - One of Isla's suggestions from the conference yesterday.

http://friendfeed.com/the-life-scientists

I signed up and found a goody because I had a pet mouse that cried - yes it was male. Yes it was on its own. My mother, being a sucker bought it a little female and.... 3 months later there were 60 or so mice in our outhouse. Now I've discovered why it cried!! - Good old Snowy!

This is what it smells like when mice cry
June 30th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

A pheromone in the male mouse’s tears causes a positive sexual response in female mice who smell it. The neural pathway was meticulously mapped in a study published today in Nature. Females ready to copulate arch their back and pose their behind when the pheromone, ESP1 is secreted. Females not ready to copulate usually just run away.

Pheromones in tears may have evolved because tear fluid lingers in the fur, and female mice often groom the faces of other mice. Crying for sex does not work in humans though, as quite a few of us know.

Haga, S., Hattori, T., Sato, T., Sato, K., Matsuda, S., Kobayakawa, R., Sakano, H., Yoshihara, Y., Kikusui, T., & Touhara, K. (2010). The male mouse pheromone ESP1 enhances female sexual receptive behaviour through a specific vomeronasal receptor Nature, 466 (7302), 118-122 DOI: 10.1038/nature09142t