Mouse Song
` Well, this has certainly helped with my earworms today - singing mice! Also, behold my Adobe Photoshop graffito! So much better than my MS Paint graffiti... (Yes, I am kidding!)
` Apparently, mating calls from male mice, triggered by smelling female mouse urine, are qualitatively similar to simple bits and pieces of two-note birdsong!
` Timothy Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri are the hooligans responsible for this discovery.
` The Nature news article reads:
The animals' high-pitched squeaking has song-like characteristics, the researchers discovered, with distinct pairs of notes arranged in repeating phrases. Holy likens the mouse songs to juvenile bird songs, which lack a complex fixed pattern of musical themes. The findings appear in the journal PLoS Biology1.
` There is a recording with its pitch lowered for human ears on this page, if you'd like to hear for yourself. It's disruptive enough to music that it halted a particularly troublesome refrain of; 'What's it like to be you?'. (Barnes and Barnes have a knack of getting stuck in my brain.)
` Considering that this song is recorded from a lab mouse, it will be interesting to know if wild mice have more complex songs. Nobody knows yet if they learn how to 'sing' or if it's just something each one can do by itself.
` So far, the best evidence that this is a learned behavior is that each lab mouse - all clones! - have a different preferred song! In other words, they don't automatically chirp in the same way, they need to get it from somewhere else!
` Not much is known yet about this phenomenon, so I'll keep you posted if 'mouse song' gets interesting.
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7 comments:
What other secrets to their squeaks hold? What other sounds do they make?
I seriously am going to put a recorder by my mouse's cage and see what plays back!
` Oo! Exciting!
so, the clone mice all have different songs?
That's awesome! So as in all science fiction novels, all clones are not exaclty alike, and develope their own 'personalities'! Just like on The Island!
Cool!!! cloning is so awesome!!!
and that graphic is SWEET!!!!!
heh heh heh!
LOVE IT!!!
` ^^ Yeah, I think it's interesting that there are many more variables in making an organism than just the genes given, which is why clones (including twins) tend to be very different inside.
` Female cat clones have a different distribution of one X chromosome vs. the other all throughout their body, which is why their Calico markings are often completely different.
` And even the expression of genes changes over time between human twins - their chromosomes diverge as they get older!
` (I wrote about that in a small post entitled Methylization: The Next Best Thing to Constantly Mutating!)
` *Thank, you Professor Quine.*
` Glad you like my 'Tweet' graphic. I wonder if anyone would get mad if they saw their precious picture defaced like that?
` Also, I take it that The Island is basically like Logan's Run - except people aren't blasted into smithereens by the 'renewing' process but instead taken to an island.
` Gah! What remakes will they come up with next?
yeah. pretty much. it reminded me of Logan' Run as well.
It was pretty good. especially since i saw it at the $1 theatre...
But it really made me wish i was Ewan McGregor's girlfriend. He's so dreamy. Sorry my boy craziness is so apparent! i guess it COULD be called a sex drive, but i guess it's more an admiration for beautiful individuals. Of course, i leave their personalities out of it, cause i know they're all jackass celebritites. Maybe that's why it's so appealing. i don't know the beautiful people, therefore i only have to judge them on the exterior. it sounds crass, but i really think that's what men do on a normal basis.
I feel justified that i think they are gorgeous - even if they are poor actors.
Example -
Milla Jovavich - horrible actress; very beautiful
Keanu Reeves - horrible horrible actor; very cute in black leather
Okay. i'm getting off the subject....what was i saying?
` Ooooooh. You and your magnetized effect towards hawt and grewvy actorz & othr ppl.
` Makes me wish I had a sex drive, just so I could do the same oh gawd I'm so starved for having various emotions. Gnnnnnnggggg!
` And yet, I don't base my judgements of hawtness solely on appearance of actors. And yet, I still cannot know the actors involved.
` So I do the next best thing - I get attracted to the characters they play. But cuteness doesn't hurt.
` I've been a big Star Trek: The Next Generation fan as well as a Babylon 5 fan for a while, and of course I eventually built up a hawtness factor for some of ze more cute characters...
` From ST:TNG, I really dig cute li'l Data, the adorable and endearing emotionless android. He's a dependable worker and friend, with a childlike innocence about human behavior - and yet he has the ability to bend steel bars and such.
` His friend, Geordie the visor-headed engineer, ain't half bad. I'd like to show him some things I can't see... Also, I adore the captain, for his captainyness of spirit and shinyness of head. I want to rub it for good luck.
` From B5, I likee most of the characters, esp. MALE ones... For example, the younger Centauri, Vir. It turns out that he's really a sweet guy who just wants to have a life and get married to someone he loves.
` He also has six, tenticle-like sexual organs, which I... uh... often wonder how they work...
` Of course, I can't go on without mentioning Lennier, the cute little Minbari played by my little e-mail friend's own alter ego.
` He may seem like a total wimp, but he manages to be quite devious in the Minbari government - so unassuming! Also, he can kick anyone's ass if need be, and he is not afraid to do so!
` Inevitably, when I think of him for too long, I wind up wondering what Minbari anatomy is like... I doubt Art will tell me, though. Gr.
` Speaking of mysteries concealed by clothing... Vorlons.
` I could go on and on and on and on... this is why I don't post blog entries of such things!
` And I must agree, Keanu is very cute in black leather.
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