As A rat fancier i can tell you rats need no assistance from scientists in this area! If they are in the mood (and they are like every few days!) they will do it with who ever their cagemates are- reguardless of gender. Female rats that mount because of sexual interests do so only when their cagemates or they are in heat. These usually do well in large groups, i gues they spread the spirit of peace and love in their mini community ;-) Female rats that mount at ANY time, are usually those from litters that were mostly males, and they usually do have extra testosterone in their systems (its true tht a female int he woumb, surrounded by males int he womb has more testosterone in her naturally, sort of the idea of what you said the scientists were doign but natural). This behavior is dominance/aggresion. They often can not live in large groups, and their cagemates must have have very submissive personalities. Sometimes they even have to live alone. This isnt very common though. AG >From: ANDREA SPIEGLE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I read somewhere that scientists could get female animals (rats, I >think) to exhibit mounting behavior by injecting them with extra >testosterone. Not exactly "in nature", but I thought it was interesting. > >Lisa Hawkes wrote: > > > > I hate to contradict someone else but homosexuality has been found in > > animals in the wild when there are no heterosexual pairings to be made. > > Strange as it may seem, researchers have found that (if my memory serves > > correctly I believe it was birds)animals exposed to high levels of > > pesticedes have a higher likelyhood of exhibiting homosexual >behavior(not > > sex necessarily but homosexual pairings). But, in your case I agree >that it > > is most likely a dominance factor. Dogs, rabbits, wolves etc... all do >the > > same sort of behviors to shoew who makes the decisions. > > >_________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at >http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
