Title: A Approach to Quantify the Influence of Self-Grooming in Animal Social Behaviors
Journal: iScience. 2022 Apr 22;25(5):104284
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104284
Comments:
Self-grooming is an established function, and it’s also significant for hygiene maintenance, thermoregulation, de-arousal, and stress reduction. Some evidence suggests that self-grooming plays a role to broadcast sensory cues that can influence behaviors among other nearby animals in social communication. Because the self-grooming in experimental animals is unpredictable, there is no direct evidence to confirm this idea.
To explore the function of self-grooming in social behaviors, the author develops an experimental approach that induces grooming with both reliability and temporal precision. They use two D3-Cre/ChR2 mice (same-sex littermates) with an optical fiber implanted in the olfactory tubercle and place two mice in each of the two side chambers under a cup. These two mice that serve as counterparts, stimulated by blue or green light. There is an observer mouse was placed in the center of the middle chamber. And the social preference tests with two mice stimulated by blue or green light it’s also performed.
These experiments make the self-grooming behavior of the mice near light stimulation was quantified, and the result shows that there is a significant difference between the two sides, observer mice spent more time with the mice which showed more grooming with blue light, and that was induced by odor sensation Those results suggest that observer mice exhibit social preference for mice that groom more regardless of biological sex.
