> The pheromone is called exocrine gland-secreting peptide 22 (ESP22), and researchers say it could one day be added to drinking water to control rodent populations.
They had in mind probably drinking water in mice cages or lab animal facilities. Reducing the male mice drive to fight would increase the wellbeing of the lab animals, thus could be useful in some cases. Human lab rats will not have typically a lot of sex in any case ;-) so...
I wonder what the role of this pheromone is in species where females can also get pregnant 24 hours after giving birth, and have 15 litters a year.
And how how effective is this pheromone at population control, in practice? The researcher quoted in the article says it might be useful in natural environments to keep resource competition and overpopulation down, but (anecdotally) I do not associate mice with conservation of resources and population control: they're infamous for devouring all available resources and breeding without any obvious signs of, umm, demureness.
Due to their youth and inexperience, we generally try to shield teenagers from the most serious consequences of their actions. Unfortunately, we can't do this with the biological consequences of pregnancy. That's why it's natural to put more effort into preventing daughters from having sex.
Parents of pregnant daughters are probably more likely to end up raising their grandkid than parents whose sons get others’ daughters pregnant. The various stressful situations and financial strain that result can wreck people.
Sometimes you just have to accept that there is a reason why these "jokes" exist and, if you are interested in it, you should try to figure out why rather than fight against the accepted wisdom.
It is assumed that they are trying to mass produce the peptid in a laboratory, not making the babies suffer. Wouldn't be animal tears anymore.
(I wonder of the mice could enter in a depressed state at a middle term by that. Not directly related, but most humans (visual animals) would get depressed, or emotionally touched at least, if forced to work in a room full of posters of crying children. Maybe mice would have developped a similar response with olfactive signals..)
My comment was meant more metaphorically, when it's synthesized. It's still a tragic example of how we humans shape the world. Now featuring synthetic tears! To me that is a little horrific.
I can't access the full study but I wonder what they did for control groups. I'd be very weary of a reverse Pavlov's dog type situation where people associate sniffing mystery liquids with leaking things and fixing those things which is not exactly a subject that puts people in the mood.
Readit News
Ugh... how about, no?
Dead Comment
And how how effective is this pheromone at population control, in practice? The researcher quoted in the article says it might be useful in natural environments to keep resource competition and overpopulation down, but (anecdotally) I do not associate mice with conservation of resources and population control: they're infamous for devouring all available resources and breeding without any obvious signs of, umm, demureness.
Needless to say, I'm no biologist.
And it's because being a young single mom sucks.
Anecdotally, about half the women I know have shared with me stories of men being various levels of inappropriate.
What is it with Hacker News and some fascination of this topic.
Here is from an earlier post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19867382 (possibly NSFL)
(I wonder of the mice could enter in a depressed state at a middle term by that. Not directly related, but most humans (visual animals) would get depressed, or emotionally touched at least, if forced to work in a room full of posters of crying children. Maybe mice would have developped a similar response with olfactive signals..)
My comment was meant more metaphorically, when it's synthesized. It's still a tragic example of how we humans shape the world. Now featuring synthetic tears! To me that is a little horrific.
Sort of...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201601/can...
https://www.google.com/search?q=crying+boner+site:www.reddit...