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How to attract a lady [Life Lines]
A lady mouse that is. You may recall a post from several years ago when we talked about how rats seem to “laugh” when tickled. Back in April 2015 researchers at Duke University presented a video that showed male mice “singing” a tune after either smelling the urine of a female mouse or being in her presence. The sounds were recorded using a microphone designed to capture 35 to 125 kilohertz (kz), which is a much higher frequency than we can hear:
Recent research published in eLife shows that female mice will sing back if interested in the male pursuing her. You can listen to a clip of a female’s response here. They discovered this after being able to isolate each singer’s voice in a group. Thus it is possible that prior recordings may have been of females as opposed to males.
Judging from the video above, it may not have been his lucky day as it does not appear she reciprocated his song…
Sources:
Neunuebel JP, Taylor AL, Arthur BJ, Egnor SER. Female mice ultrasonically interact with males during courtship displays. eLife. 4: e06203, 2015. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06203
Video from Duke University via YouTube
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/lifelines/2015/09/17/how-to-attract-a-lady/
