WIKIMEDIA, RAMANon-monogamous male lab mice are not natural fathers, but they do provide parental care when housed together with their mates and pups for a few days. Now, scientists in Japan have demonstrated that when both parents are separated from the pups, the mother communicates through ultrasonic vocalisations (USVs) and odor cues to stimulate the father to provide parental care when the offspring are returned. So it seems that when the mother fears for her pups, she tells the father to get involved. The findings were published today (January 8) in Nature Communications.
“We have shown before that male mice having been fathers for 5 days are ready for pup care, while fathers with 1 day of pup experience are not,” said Günter Ehret, a neurobiologist at the University of Ulm in Germany, who was not involved in the research. “This study suggests that not only the pups stimulate the males to become caring father after 5 days of contact, [but also] that the pup’s mother signals to the father that the pups may need help.”
Haruhiro Higashida and colleagues at Kanazawa University in Japan set about trying to find out precisely what motivates male mice to become active parents by studying pup retrieval behavior. When a new mating pair is continuously housed together with the pups, sires ...
