This way they protect their current and future offspring.😊🧐🐭
Female mice who are pregnant or breastfeeding have banana-scented urine which is thought to frighten males.
Male mice’s stress levels were examined when they were placed with different groups of other mice: another male, a pregnant female, a breastfeeding female, and the ones who no longer were lactating.
When male mice were together with pregnant or nursing mice, their stress hormones were risen, but not at the time when they were with other groups.
Researchers have concluded that this was because of substances in pregnant and nursing mice’s urine. It is called amyl acetate and smells like bananas. When the male mice sniffed it, it floated into their cages and stressed them out.
In this way, female mice emit this chemical to alert male mice that they are going to have or recently have had pups. Male mice are attempting to kill other pups fathered by other males.
Accordingly, pregnant and lactating females produced more urine traces when exposed to unfamiliar males than to the fathers of their pups.
