Jane Hurst on the secret life of mice
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mice, like humans, prefer to be treated with a little dignity, and that extends to how they are handled.
Pick a mouse up by its tail, as was the norm in laboratories for decades, and it gets anxious. Make a mouse anxious and it can skew the results of the research it’s being used for.
What mice like, and how they behave, is the focus of Professor Jane Hurst’s research. Much of that behaviour, she’s discovered, can be revealed by following what they do with their noses - where they take them and what’s contained in the scent marks they sniff.
Now William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool, Jane has unravelled a complex array of scent signals that underpin the way mice communicate, and how each selects a mate.
Within this heady mix of male scent, she’s identified one particular pheromone that is so alluring to females that she named it Darcin, after Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
Producer: Beth Eastwood
Transcript
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| 0:37.7 | Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific. |
| 0:41.8 | Mice, rather like us humans, prefer to be treated with a little dignity. |
| 0:46.2 | For example, how they're handled. |
| 0:48.3 | Picking them up by the tail, as was the norm in laboratories for decades, |
| 0:52.4 | makes them anxious and so can skew the results of the research for which they're being used. |
| 0:57.2 | So says my guest today and she should know. |
| 1:00.6 | Jane Hurst is William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool. |
| 1:05.7 | She spent her career exploring the secret life of mice and how they behave. |
| 1:10.7 | Much of that behaviour she's discovered can be revealed by following their noses, |
| 1:15.4 | where those noses take them and what's in the scent marks that they find. |
| 1:19.9 | Jane has unraveled a complex array of scent signals that underpinned the way |
| 1:24.6 | mice communicate and how each selects a mate. |
| 1:28.0 | Within this heavy mix of male scent, she's identified one particular pheromone |
| 1:33.6 | that's so alluring to females that she's named it after Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. |
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