Promiscuous Mouse Mothers have Sexier Sons: Urinary Pheromones Higher, Call Potential Mates

For mice, it doesn't matter much how big your nest is or how much cheddar cheese you stole from the kitchen. When it comes to mating, a new study suggests that it all comes down to the amount of pheromones found in urine-a naturally occurring odorless substance that's externally excreted from the body.

A recent study shows that the sons of promiscuous mice moms make more urinary pheromones and thus, may be more sexually appealing to potential mates.

"If your sons are particularly sexy, and mate more than they would otherwise, it's helping get your genes more efficiently into the next generation," senior study author Wayne Potts said, via a press release. "Only recently have we started to understand that environmental conditions experienced by parents can influence the characteristics of their offspring. This study is one of the first to show this kind of 'epigenetic' process working in a way that increases the mating success of sons."

Researchers found that male mice whose parents were freely involved in seminatural "mouse barns" were seen to produce more than 30 percent of major urinary problems for the creatures, also known as sex attractants. They also found that the pheromone output coming from these mice increased even though the male offsprings never competed socially.

However, the study notes that a newborn mouse's ability to lead a healthy and reproductive life did not soley depend on their parents genetics but also on epigenetics--changes in gene activity that is not caused by DNA sequences. For instance, epigenetics shows how the parent's environmental setting modified their offspring's genes to influence the total amount of protein their offspring produced.

"Pheromones are the language of mice," first study author and former University of Utah doctoral student Adam C. Nelson said, via a press release. "When females mate in a socially competitive environment, they program their sons to have a head start by producing more pheromones."

More information regarding the study can be found online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.