While examining the response of male mice to pregnant and lactating female mice, researchers made an extremely strange discovery: Strangely, they are afraid of the smell of bananas…
A team from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, was studying spikes in stress hormone responses in male mice when they were in close proximity to late-pregnancy female mice. “Male mice show stress and stress-induced pain inhibition in the vicinity of late-pregnancy or lactating female mice,” says the report, published in Science Advances. The report continues: “We also observe, as previously seen, that late pregnancy and lactating female mice respond to gonadally impaired male mice with aggression and urine marking.”
Male mice are known to be aggressive and infective towards offspring to protect their genetics. In addition to aggressively defending their babies, pregnant and lactating female mice emit chemicals to warn these males to stay away.
Professor Jeffrey Mogil, senior author of the study, said in an interview with Live Science, “Many mammals other than rodents and humans rely on their sense of smell. The smell of urine is well known, but what we found here is a new message that has never been explained before in mammals.” He continued: “We’ve seen a lot of olfactory messages sent from males to females, but there are fewer instances of females sending them to males. Most of these messages are about sexual behavior, but in this case, gender has nothing to do with it. The females are telling the males to stay away, otherwise the consequences will be terrible if you touch my offspring.”
This is where the fear of bananas comes into play
N, which is found in the urine of female mice, especially during late pregnancy and lactation, the authors say. The compound -pentyl acetate, one of the chemicals that produces the greatest effect on hormone changes in male mice. As the team explains, “N-pentyl acetate is very similar in chemical structure to isoamyl (or isopentyl) acetate, both of which are found in a variety of fruits and are used to produce banana oil/extract.
The team purchased a banana oil extract from the grocery store and placed it inside the cages of male mice to measure their stress levels. Surprisingly, they noticed that the response was significantly increased. She thinks it’s similar: “Mother attack, male intruders’ infanticide Although not always successful in preventing the process, any threat of violence on either side is likely to produce stress, and maternal aggression has been shown to produce direct stress-induced pain inhibition.” In other words, male mice perceive the scent of banana as a stimulus to the female.
The study also says that virgin male mice are more likely to be stressed by the presence of N-pentyl acetate. This fits with their tendency to be more aggressive to infants than non-virgin mice, suggesting they are more of a threat to infants than to older males.
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