Welcome to Why Mice Sing. A morass of science, the grotesquery, art, and other randomness that generally results when you give a pen to a pillock.
Past and Present Projects:
I was innocently reading the “Geology of the Sir Samuel 1:250 000 sheet area, Western Australia” notes by Liu, Champion & Cassidy (2002), when I discover how to make both men and roosters happy. It is the “Cocks-Satisfaction Zone“. Apparently, the best exposure is west of the northern section of the Mt McClure Fault in W.A. I shall retrieve my brain from the gutter now, and may have to wipe down my desk after snorting coffee all over it.
MiceSong
"Mouse songs are sung at ultrasonic frequencies, which is why no one has noticed their complexity before, nor indeed been moved to celebrate the tunes in romantic poetry" (Hooper, 2005)
A paper in PLoS Biology by (Holy & Guo, 2005) demonstrated that male mice vocalise within a range of over 30 to 110 kHz (ultrasonic) in the presence of females, or female urine. The vocalisations have the characteristics of song with "several different syllable types, whose temporal sequencing includes the utterance of repeated phrases" the complexity of which, approaches "that of many songbirds".
Holy TE, Guo Z (2005), Ultrasonic Songs of Male Mice. PLoS Biol 3(12): e386
Hooper, R. (2005), Romantic rodents give secret serenades, New Scientist News Service, (Acc: 21/04/06)
