Honey, I ate the kids: how hunger and hormones make mice aggressive
Nature Podcast
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4.4 • 859 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
00:48 How hunger, hormones and aggression interact in mouse brains
Researchers have uncovered the neural mechanisms that underlie an aggressive behaviour in mice prompted by hunger and hormonal state. Virgin female mice can become aggressive towards mouse pups when they are food deprived, but it seems that the relevant amounts of pregnancy hormones, oestrogen and progesterone, also played a role. By investigating the neurons involved, neuroscientists showed how hunger and hormones are integrated by the brain to lead to aggressive behaviour. This could help researchers understand more about how multiple stimuli are interpreted by the brain, something much harder to study than single stimulus effects.
Research Article: Cao et al.
09:35 Research Highlights
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Research Highlight: Wastewater treatment produces surprising amounts of greenhouse gases
Research Highlight: Andean peoples hunted and gathered long after they embraced farming
11:53 What generative AI could mean for higher education
Around the world, universities and students are scrambling to adapt to the use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. And while there is optimism that these tools could improve education, there are also concerns about the ways they could stifle independent, critical thought. We hear about the studies trying to unpick the potential impact of this new technology.
News Feature: Universities are embracing AI: will students get smarter or stop thinking?
21:26 Briefing Chat
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nature. |
| 0:02.0 | In a experiment. |
| 0:05.0 | Why is blight so far? |
| 0:08.0 | Like, it sounds so simple. |
| 0:09.0 | They had no idea. |
| 0:11.0 | But now the data's... |
| 0:12.0 | I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding. |
| 0:20.0 | Nature. Welcome back to the nature podcast. |
| 0:25.6 | This week, how hunger and hormones interact in mouse brains |
| 0:30.7 | and what generative AI could mean for universities and for students' education. |
| 0:36.4 | I'm Charmany Bandelle and I'm Nick Pertr-Chal. |
| 0:48.2 | Sensations like hunger are interpreted by our brains and ultimately result in a behaviour response. Perhaps hunger will |
| 0:57.5 | cause you to seek out a snack, for instance. And while researchers understand a lot about how |
| 1:02.6 | a single stimulus, like this, results in a behaviour, most often you actually encounter multiple |
| 1:09.0 | different states at once. |
| 1:13.8 | Perhaps you're cold and hungry or hot and thirsty. |
| 1:19.2 | Less is known about how these, sometimes competing, states interact in the brain. |
| 1:23.2 | A new study in nature, though, may shed a little bit of light on this, |
| 1:30.1 | as a serendipitous observation led to researchers looking at how mouse hunger and hormones interact. |
| 1:35.3 | This could help explain how the brain condenses competing stimuli into an action. |
| 1:41.1 | I called up one of the team behind the new paper, Johnny Kuhl, and he explained how they got started. |
| 1:46.0 | This project came about quite serendipitously when one of my graduate students discovered that very mild food deprivation in virgin female mice |
... |
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