title: The maternal pheromone of the rat as an innate stimulus for pre-weanling young.
abstract: We undertook to determine whether previous exposure in the nest is necessary to establish the attractiveness of the maternal pheromone or whether that attractiveness is innately based. In Experiment I we showed that the pheromone is a prepotent stimulus insofar as it is approached in preference to a different but equally familiar odor. Experiment 2 demonstrated that when pups are denied previous exposure to the pheromone they nonetheless approach the pheromone preferentially in a choice test involving a pheromone-emitting and a non-pheromone-emitting female. And finally, in Experiment 3, we again used pups that had been isolated from the pheromone. Here, however, the choice was between a pheromone-emitting female and a female which, while non-pheromone-emitting, carried a thoroughly familiar nest odor. The pups decisively chose the pheromone-emitting female. We conclude that pheromonal attractiveness is innately based and suggest that the pheromone itself may have been selected as a signal during the course of evolution.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007323:Instinct; D008297:Male; D008425:Maternal Behavior; D010675:Pheromones / Q000502:physiology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D010675:Pheromones