Okay, so this is odd. Female rats whose upbringing involves less grooming display more sex-related behaviors and are strongly preferred by male rats.

Quote: In a mate preference task, male rats chose, almost exclusively, to mount, copulate and ejaculate with female rats reared under Low LG (Low licking grooming) conditions.

Under non-paced mating conditions, female Low LG rats display significantly more paracopulatory and copulatory behaviors compared to High LG rats. Due to its critical role in female paracopulatory behavior, progesterone receptor immunoreactivity (PR-ir) in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH) was also assessed in both groups of female rats. Estradiol induced PR-ir in the VMH was significantly higher in Low LG relative to High LG rats.

Mice like their girls dirty.

The lg group has higher PR-ir. Whats the critical role that it plays?

(12-16-2013 12:09 PM)paradigmshift Wrote:  Mice like their girls dirty.

The lg group has higher PR-ir. Whats the critical role that it plays?

Well, the article talked about how the rats were raised, I thought, not how the adult rats groomed themselves. My bad for not including a link back to the abstract I quoted.
Link here.

Though you do raise a very interesting point in that maybe how the rats were raised impacted how they groomed themselves?


PR-ir is progesterone receptor immunoreactivity. I believe what the study is saying is that the high PR-ir rats had more progesterone receptors, and this was demonstrated using an ELISA or ELISA-like test.

On a similar note, I found this;

Quote:Bisphenol A increases progesterone receptor immunoreactivity in the hypothalamus in a dose-dependent manner and affects sexual behaviour in adult ovariectomized rats.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535155

Bisphenol A is a chemical found in the lining of most cans of food. It's an endocrine disruptor that may have lifelong effects.

Gee, I could be way off base, but what I hypothesized from from the post was that the female rats may have been licking off pheromones, thus reducing male interest. But, that was just my initial thought without delving any deeper and I could be wronger than wrong.

@Mark - If so, that indicates that less pheromone exposure in youth might lead to less sex drive when older. At least in rats.