Promiscuous Moms Bear Sexier Sons


Sons who smell good, play hard, and die young.

They attract more females by making more pheromones, at the cost of a shorter life.

Okay, to be honest, we're talking about mice here, not humans.  But it shows the power of a provocative title and our fixation on sex.
 
Consider this quote:  "If your sons are particularly sexy, and mate more than they would otherwise, it's helping get your genes more efficiently into the next generation," says biology professor Wayne Potts, senior author of the new study.

"Only recently have we started to understand that environmental conditions experienced by parents can influence the characteristics of their offspring. This study is one of the first to show the 'epigenetic' process working in a way that increases the mating success of sons."

Male mice whose parents freely competed for mates in semi-natural "mouse barns" produced 31 percent more sex attractants called pheromones -- than male mice from caged monogamous parents, the biologists report.

Yet the male mice that produced more pheromone had shorter lifespans in another recent study by Potts and Nelson. Only 48 percent of them lived to the end of the experiment, compared with 80 percent of the male mice whose parents lived monogamously in cages. That's likely because it takes so much energy to produce the sex attractants.

Dads Make Sons Less Sexy
Domesticated mice usually breed monogamously because they are caged only with one mate. "In nature, mice must seek out and choose their own mates -- a process that is eliminated in standard lab breeding conditions," says Nelson, who performed the study for his doctoral thesis at the University of Utah.

What does this research mean for people?
The impacts of social environments on human pheromone output and other traits haven't been studied. "Researchers just have started to scratch the surface of discovering traits that are influenced by parental experience," Potts says. "It is difficult to predict which and how many traits will be involved."

Now, I'm sure some social commentators could have fun with the results of this study. 
 
"Many partners means you die young.  Smiling." 
 
"He's so sexy.  Bet he has father issues." 
 
"What a hunk.  His mother was the town tart." 

Does this help with your current writing project?  Probably not.  But I hope it brought a smile to your face. 
*  *  *  *  *

Story Source:  Adam C. Nelson, Joseph W. Cauceglia, Seth D. Merkley, Neil A. Youngson, Andrew J. Oler, Randy J. Nelson, Bradley R. Cairns, Emma Whitelaw, and Wayne K. Potts. Reintroducing domesticated wild mice to sociality induces adaptive transgenerational effects on MUP expression. PNAS, November 2013.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Workout supplements: An emerging eating disorder in men?

Image
therewontbeanydoves.wordpress.com When developing a fictional character, you may not think about the character using large amounts of over-the-counter dietary supplements.  Especially a man who uses large amounts of workout supplements. While there has been widespread publicity on the dangers of the non-prescribed use of anabolic steroids, not much is said about legal, over-the-counter supplements.  Are there risks?  And if so, what are they?  There are several things the writer should consider. Supplement use is becoming an eating disorder with many men who use them to prepare for and recover from a workout. There is growing evidence of a link between muscle-building supplements and testicular cancer. There is evidence that over-the counter medications and supplements are the most common causes of drug-induced liver failure (a rare event, but still a risk.)  There is even evidence that, “certain popular herbal and dietary supplements can also cause liver damage,"
Read more

How laughter leads to love.

Image
James Cagney rubs a grapefruit half in the face of Mae Clarke  in the classic flick, Public Enemy (1931), written by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, adaptation for the screen by Harvey Thew.  Funny? Yes.  A rom-com?  Not really.  Great scene, though. Between romance novels and rom-com movies and television, there is a never ending, ever growing market for romance.  So what leads to romance?  Of everything, it is laughter.  Not at, but with.  So here's how it works:  Boy meets girl.  Boy gets the girl to laugh.  (Add a few tasty comedic or dramatic interludes), and viola, girl catches boy (after boy makes a complete horse's ass of himself,) and the happy couple goes giggling into the sunset.   Formulaic?  Very much so.   Greatly entertaining?  Very much so. Until kids, mortgage and divorce. . . but that's a story for later. Here's a report on laughter in romance, with a link to the full study in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * Laught
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more

Biologist's 'Map Of Life' Predicts ET. (So where is he? She? It?)

Image
Source: www.wired.com Incredible, Detailed Map of the Galaxy by Winchell Chung showing the location of the Earth - between two arms of the Milky Way galaxy, and a few of the habitable planets we know of in our proximity. You'll notice that our planet is in relatively uninhabited area of space.  We're out in the boonies, far from potentially inhabited stars making it difficult to find us, and to reach us. You must have noticed the explosion of interest and speculation about alien life, and even alien life that has visited Earth across so many media outlets.  It's like the Pet Rock fad of our decade.  From a writer's viewpoint, this has led to some wonderful speculative science fiction from Jules Verne to The Hitch Hikers' Guide - literally thousands of titles by hundreds of authors - over the past century and a half. Have you wondered what research scientists think, research and write about the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe?   I m
Read more

On Being Humble: E.B. White was Right in Charlotte's Web

Image
It seems the best authors have a knack for accurately describing the personality traits of their characters.  For example, the character change experienced by Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens A Christmas Carol is considered by research psychologists to be spot on for how the process of change works. How true to life was Scrooge's change? Is this ability to describe a character strictly from watching others?  Business writer Peter Drucker says in his semi-autobiographical book, Adventures of a Bystander that he and many of the other writers he knows are essentially bystanders, observing what is going on around them. Another example of a writer getting it right is E.B. White's popular children's book, Charlotte's Web.  Research psychologist Peter Samuelson and his team are researching the deeper meaning of humility.  Among their conclusions?  E.B. White displayed insight into humility and its underlying attributes. Here's the story : *  *  *  *  * The Two
Read more