If I had a bunch of Lab rats and loads of spare time I know what sort of experiments I’d set up! It seems the animal behaviour researchers at McMaster University in Ontario Canada share my perversions interests. Bennett Galef’s research team has been studying sexual attraction amongst rats.

Bored researchers placed two male rats behind mesh screens at either end of a tank, only one of which had recently copulated with a female.

A number of different female rats were then placed, separately, in the middle of the tank. Galef’s team found that these females typically moved over and lingered longer near the stud.

With blinding insight Galef notes:

It’s highly likely that the female rats are attracted by the smell of the sexually active male, rather than repelled by the stench of desperation from the sex-starved one. It’s unlikely that males would evolve a signal that makes them unattractive to females!

What really made me astonished was that turning over two pages revealed a full single page advertisement for Ontario, paid for by the Government of Ontario. Is this a coincidence?

Under a headline “One natural resource in Ontario is mined more than any other” sits a multicoloured image of a brain… I’m sceptical ;)

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Posted by Oliver in Anthropology, Biology