Meadow Vole VS The Lovely Prairie Vole

[Tone]

Happy belated 'Sweetest Day'

The Meadow Vole is promiscuous while its cousin the oxytocin rich Prairie Vole is monogamous and will stay with its mate for life.

USA Today has reported:

By transferring a single gene to the pleasure center of the naturally promiscuous male vole, researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta were able to make it happily monogamous, they say in a letter in the journal Nature.

In studying the brain chemistry of the two mammals, researchers found that when the monogamous prairie vole mates, the pleasure hormone dopamine is released in its brain. The receptors for that dopamine are located in the brain's pleasure center, which also happens to be where the receptors for the hormone vasopressin are located. And vasopressin is linked to social learning.

read more:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science...les-usat_x.htm

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/me...love-0506.html

[Ashlee]

I'm struggling to understand this

What was accomplished with the rodents?

[Theif of Time]

They made a non-monogamous (Mates with one mate) Rodent into a monogamous rodent.

Basically, it stops the man-whore rodent cheating on his gf.
Naturally you can see openings everywhere for this technology.

[Subjugation]

Similar to what leading primatologist Frans De Waal was talking about in his new book, Our Inner Ape.

He addresses the "empathy" gene that appears in certain species of primates, like bonobos. We share about 98.5% of our DNA with both chimps and bonobos---they are our closes genetic relative. Although both humans and bonobos share this empathy gene, chimps don't have it.

Interestingly, bonobos are generally a sexual and gentle ape, and chimps are generally more aggressive and territorial than their bonobo cousins. The inference that De Waal wrote about is that humans seem to have both of these qualities, and it's probably due to evolutionary biology.

[Sufficient]

If you take an Animal Behavior course in college ... they'll usually bring up this specific case. At least they did when I took the course.

[Superted]

http://www.foldmoney.com/20b.htm

[Ilya]

that is amazing!!