The Mysteries of Instinct
The inner workings behind instinctive behaviours remain largely unknown. Questions that appear relatively simple to us such as the manner in which a mouse is able to use its formidable sense of smell to become aware of and consequently flee from potential predators, even those that it has never before encountered are currently unknown.
Two neuroscientists from the Harvard Medical School, Stephen Liberies and David Ferrero have recently uncovered a compound that it found in high levels within the urine of carnivores that sets of an instinctive response in rodents that causes them to flee from these predators. This is the first time in history that scientific researchers have been able to successfully discover a compound that enables rodents to successfully discern between friend and foe. The authors of this research believe that their discovery will enable scientists to comprehend the molecular workings behind instinctive behaviour.
The discoveries made in this study were made available in the online version of the proceedings of the national academy of science.
It is known that mice and other like rodents have over one thousand two hundred smell receptors; this is incredibly high when compared with human beings who are far more reliant upon their sense of smell.
A graduate student at Harvard Medical School, David Ferrero had started to look for additional compounds that could be detected by TAARs (Trace Amine Associated Receptors). David worked with prey and predator urine that was widely and publicly available; he found that of fourteen of the TAARs found in mice, TAAR 4 was able to successfully detect the smell of several carnivorous animals.
The two researchers had discovered Kairomone, a chemical that has been showed to work in a similar way to pheromone, but kairomone differs in that it communicates between members of various species as opposed to those of the same species.