Why are male mice afraid of the scent of bananas?



Mice seem to be animals that can eat anything from meat to vegetables to fruits, but it turns out that male mice are not good at the 'banana scent'. It has also been clarified that males who have not experienced mating feel more stress due to the 'banana scent' than males who have experienced mating.

Olfactory exposure to late-pregnant and lactating mice causes stress-induced analgesia in male mice

https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abi9366

Male mice are terrified of bananas. Here's why. | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/mice-fear-bananas

A research team at McGill University discovered that male mice dislike the scent of bananas. The research team noticed that male mice kept in the laboratory behave differently when they are near pregnant female mice, so among the substances emitted by females, male mice I tried to find out the stressful supplies.

The research team investigated the time it took for a male mouse to respond to pain by putting a male mouse in a cage, sniffing a variety of substances emitted by the female, and then bringing a heat source close to the leg. In the figure below, the vertical axis shows the reaction time to pain, and it can be seen that the reaction time of mice that sniffed ' n-pentyl acetate ' is the slowest.



Organisms (PDF files) are known to be less

responsive to pain when stressed . From this, the research team concluded that 'n-pentyl acetate' stresses male mice.

This 'n-pentyl acetate' is also known as an ingredient that produces the unique scent of bananas. Therefore, the research team conducted the same experiment as above by letting male mice smell the scent of commercially available banana oil. As a result, it was found that males who smelled the scent of banana oil also had a slower response to pain, suggesting that the scent of banana stresses male mice.



According to the research team, the phenomenon of slow response to pain was noticeable in males who had never mated. Among male mice, inexperienced mating individuals are known to be highly aggressive to newborn mice, so the research team said, 'Pregnant and lactating mice use'n-acetate to protect their children from males. It is issuing 'Pentil'. '

in Science,   Creature, Posted by log1o_hf