It might be the sweet smell of success or the bitter whiff of despair, but there’s something in the odour of a male rat that tells a female whether he’s been copulating like crazy or starved of sex for days. And to make matters worse for frustrated males, the females much prefer the smell of road-tested studs.
Bennett Galef’s team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, placed two male rats behind mesh screens at either end of a tank, one of which had recently copulated with a female. A number of different female rats were then placed, separately, in the middle of the tank. Galef’s…
