Prey animals such as rats display innate defensive responses when exposed to the odor of
a predator, providing a valuable means of studying the neurobiology of anxiety. While the …

Diet is arguably the most significant environmental factor shaping chemical signals in
animals. In rare cases, dietary components are converted directly into pheromones or …

Communicating individual identity is essential for stable social systems. It is assumed that
there are benefits for both senders and receivers to provide and discriminate identity cues. In …

Embryos were traditionally considered to possess limited learning abilities because of the
immaturity of their developing brains. By contrast, neonates from diverse species show …

Understanding when learning begins is critical for identifying the factors that shape both the
developmental course and the function of information acquisition. Until recently, sufficient …

Variation in the acoustic structure of alarm signals has mainly been viewed as coding
information about the type of predator or the level of threat posed by the predator. Alarm …

To evaluate the two most widely accepted mechanisms of kin recognition, prior association
and phenotype matching, we studied kin discrimination in the South American hystricognath …

The olfactory acuity of mice allows them to discriminate odors of conspecifics differing by a
few genes. This acuity is used in habituation procedures where investigation of novel odors …

Whereas the house mouse (Mus domesticus) has been studied extensively in terms of
physiology/behavior and pheromonal attributes, the evolutionarily related mound-building …

Rodents obtain information about a new food source through olfactory cues of conspecifics
and consequently develop an attraction for this diet. Generally, physical contact between an …