Male mice prefer action to erotica

Japanese (well, what else) scientists as a result of a series of experiments have established that male mice like to watch video clips of fighting mice more than videos of mice having sex. For this, scientists have made analogs of "home theater" for home mice. Behaviorists from the Brain Institute RIKEN-BSI and other universities were engaged in behavioral analysis.

In the experiments, mice were first shown clips on which other mice were snuffed sniffing each other, fighting and having sex. Then the mice were placed in a cage that had exits to two different “cinemas”. In the first part of the experiment, the choices given to the mice included snooping rollers and sex rollers. In the second part, the choice was between rollers with fights and rollers with sex.
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Videos were shown using iPhones. Mice were shown different videos with different mice to exclude the possible influence of a particular video.

As a result, it turned out that when choosing between rollers with sex and with mutual sniffing, the mice spent 41% of the time watching sex, and 34% spent sniffing. In the case of a choice between fights and sex, 40% of the time was spent observing the fights, and 35% about sex. As a result, scientists have concluded that the favorite spectacle of mice are fighting, in second place is sex, in the third - sniffing.

In order to prove that the mice did recognize the type of activity taking place in the video, and not just some of the commercials were involved, in subsequent experiments, the mice were trained to distinguish different commercials, which they successfully coped with. In addition, in the last part of the experiment, mice were injected with morphine in the case of choosing one of the “cinemas”, as a result of which they returned for a new dose to this “cinema”, regardless of which movie they played there.

Studies on the behavior of animals are conducted, in particular, to better understand the behavioral characteristics of people. And if the laureates of the Nobel Prize in physics are already practically defined, then in this case the Schnebel Prize will be just right.