Natural World
June 2, 2022 | 1 comment
Male mice really don’t like bananas. Image Credit: Bru-nO / Pixabay
This rather unexpected discovery was recently made by scientists who were studying mice behavior in a lab.
It might sound like the most unlikeliest of phobias, but according to new research, mice (or at least male mice) have a peculiar aversion to the world’s most popular bendy yellow fruit.
The discovery was made by researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec who had been analyzing stress hormones in male mice when they were close to pregnant females.
It turned out that the observed hormonal changes in male mice were triggered by a compound known as n-pentyl acetate which, in addition to being found in the urine of female mice, also happens to be responsible for giving bananas their smell.
“The whole thing came as a surprise, since we were not looking for this in particular and found it by accident,” study senior author Jeffrey Mogil told Live Science.
“The pregnant females were in our lab for another experiment, and one of our grad students realized that the males began acting weird.”
Source: MSN.com | Comments (1)
