Abstract
Odour cues influence a variety of social activities in mammals, including kin recognition, mate selection, inbreeding avoidance and juvenile dispersal from the natal area1,2,3. Inbreeding avoidance is particularly evident across the mammalian phyla because inbreeding can cause a reduction in fitness4. Here we show that the attraction of mice to the urinary odours of other mice is subject to a 'parent-of-origin' effect5 which causes both males and females to prefer the odour of urine from mice of an unrelated strain to that of urine from mice of the same strain as their mothers.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Waldman, B., Frumhoff, P. C. & Sherman, P. W. Trends Ecol. Evol. 3, 8–13 (1988).
Moore, J. & Ali, R. Anim. Behav. 32, 94–112 (1984).
Barnard, C. J. & Fitzsimons, J. Anim. Behav. 38, 35–40 (1989).
Meagher, S., Penn, D. J. & Potts, W. K. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 3324–3329 (2000).
Barlow, D. P. Science 270, 1610–1613 (1995).
Yamazaki, K. et al. Science 240, 1331–1332 (1988).
Sundberg, H., Doving, K., Novikov, S. & Ursin, H. Behav. Neural Biol. 34, 113–119 (1982).
Mateo, J. M. & Johnston, R. E. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 267, 695–700 (2000).
Amadou, C. et al. Immunol. Rev. 167, 211–221 (1999).
Fan, W., Liu, Y. C., Parimoo, S. & Weissman, S. M. Genomics 27, 119–123 (1995).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Isles, A., Baum, M., Ma, D. et al. Urinary odour preferences in mice. Nature 409, 783–784 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35057323
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35057323
This article is cited by
-
No speed dating please! Patterns of social preference in male and female house mice
Frontiers in Zoology (2017)
-
Quantitative inheritance of volatile pheromones and darcin and their interaction in olfactory preferences of female mice
Scientific Reports (2017)
-
The Effects of Disease Vulnerability on Preferences for Self-Similar Scent
Evolutionary Psychological Science (2016)
-
A male pheromone-mediated trade-off between female preferences for genetic compatibility and sexual attractiveness in rats
Frontiers in Zoology (2014)
-
Brain-expressed imprinted genes and adult behaviour: the example of Nesp and Grb10
Mammalian Genome (2014)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.