Publication Date:
1981-03-06
Description:
Throughout development, Mongolian gerbils engage in conspicuous naso-oral investigations of their social partners' mouth areas. The behavioral contribution of saliva-related stimuli in regulating oral-directed responses was studied during several important phases of the gerbil's social life. Weanlings were preferentially attracted to their mother's saliva, subadults at puberty preferred saliva of littermates to that of nonlittermates, and sexually experienced males preferred the saliva of estrous females to that of nonestrous females. The use of saliva as a discriminative cue during various developmental periods suggests that oral chemostimuli have a perennial role in regulating social interchanges.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Block, M L -- Volpe, L C -- Hayes, M J -- R03MH 27346/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1981 Mar 6;211(4486):1062-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7466378" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Animals, Suckling/physiology
;
Behavior, Animal/*physiology
;
Female
;
Gerbillinae/*physiology
;
Male
;
Maternal Behavior
;
Saliva/*physiology
;
*Social Behavior
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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