Fun with Science Club®


			Can ultrasonic sounds tell a mouse how hungry you are? Carrie Straight 05.14.01 Mice can communicate by making ultrasonic sounds, sounds higher than most humans can hear. Scientists recorded ultrasonic sounds when males are around females, when females are together. Even baby mice make ultrasonic sounds. Scientists don’t know why they make these sounds. When two mice first meet one another, they create many ultrasonic sounds. During their initial contact, the mice can also smell their neighbors and tell what they have been eating. So the scientists predicted that the ultrasonic sounds might also help the meeting mice communicate what they have been eating. To test this prediction, they conducted an experiment. They got a group of mice, Mus musculus. They fed half of them as much food as they wanted, but the other half of the mice only got a little food. Sometimes the food given to the mice did not taste good and sometimes it did. The scientists then placed two mice in a cage together. One of the two mice would be in its home cage the other would be a visitor. The researchers recorded their behavior including how many ultrasonic vocalizations they were making. The visitor mouse made very few ultrasonic vocalizations, but spent a lot of time checking out the other mouse’s cage. The food eaten by the visiting mouse changed the home mouse’s behavior. When the visiting mouse had eaten bad food, the home mouse smelled the visitor more around its mouth and nose (the visiting mouse probably didn’t wash her face before she came over). If the home mouse was hungry, she made more ultrasonic calls regardless of whether the visiting mouse had eaten bad or good food. If the home mouse was not hungry, she called more only if the visitor had eaten good food.


			Moles, Anna and Francesca R. D’Amato. 2000. Ultrasonic vocalization by female mice in the presence of a conspecific carrying food cues. Animal Behavior 60: 689-694.