Mice naturally engage in physical distancing

Recommendable! Amazing stuff! 

More evidence that humans are perhaps not so superior to animals as we have been led to believe?

"For mice and many other animals, certain behaviors such as mating and fighting are innately programmed, meaning that the animals automatically engage in them when certain stimuli are present." Maybe animals are not that stupid or primitive!

"... In a study that explores how otherwise powerful instincts can be overridden in some situations, researchers ... found that when male mice encountered a female mouse showing signs of illness, the males interacted very little with the females and made no attempts to mate with them as they normally would. The researchers also showed that this behavior is controlled by a circuit in the amygdala, which detects distinctive odors from sick animals and triggers a warning signal to stay away. ...
Previous studies have shown that mice can distinguish between healthy mice and mice that have been injected with a bacterial component called LPS, which induces mild inflammation when given at a low dose. These studies suggested that mice use odor, processed by their vomeronasal organ, to identify sick individuals. ...

The researchers also showed that the COApm [part of the amygdala]  communicates with another part of the amygdala called the medial amygdala, and this communication, carried by a hormone called thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH), is necessary to suppress mating behavior. The link to TRH is intriguing ... because thyroid dysfunction has been implicated in depression and social withdrawal in humans. She now plans to explore the possibility that internal factors (such as mental state) can alter TRH levels in the COApm circuits to modulate social behavior. ..."

"... Little is known about the neural mechanisms that enable appropriate risk assessment and the suppression of hazardous social interactions. Here we identify the posteromedial nucleus of the cortical amygdala (COApm) as a locus required for the suppression of male mating when a female mouse is unhealthy. ..."

Mice naturally engage in physical distancing, study finds | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT neuroscientists have identified a brain circuit that stops mice from mating with others that appear to be sick.

Here is the link to the underlying research article:

An amygdala circuit that suppresses social engagement (no public access)