Contents:  
- So why do mice sing?
- Behind the curtain

So why do mice sing? Or What is in a name.

“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)

So do mice sing? And if so, why? A paper in PLoS Biology aimed to demonstrate, that not only did mice vocalise, but they also sang with a range of over 30 to 110 kHz (Holy and Guo, 2005). The authors wanted to show that mice vocalised with the characteristics of song with “several different syllable types, whose temporal sequencing includes the utterance of repeated phrases” (Holy and Guo, 2005).

Holy and Guo found that the males sing in the presence of females or female urine, or rather in the presence of female pheromones. To find this out they had placed cotton swabs doused with sex-specific hormones (pheromones) and recorded any sounds made by the mice.

“The richness and complexity of mouse song appear to approach that of many songbirds” (Holy and Guo, 2005)

The paper goes into detail about the results, and is accessible to the lay reader. As a bonus it is in PLoS so you can read it without needing a subscription.

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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, (Accessed: 21 April 2006)

Random trivia: The name also appealed to me, as “mouse” was my nickname as a child. It wasn’t because I was quiet: It was the way I ate. I ate copious amounts of food, and I nibbled it. Or at least this was the story I was told. I just had a thought, if my mother called me mouse because of the way that I ate, I dread to think why she called my sister ‘possum’ (after Australian possums, not that weird rat thing in the USA).

Behind the curtain: All about me, me, me!

I honestly don’t see much point in providing a detailed biography. I like my privacy (yes, despite keeping a ‘blog’). Anyway, random bits of trivia from my life will turn up all through the blog. But the basics are:

I am an Australian geologist, I consider myself an artist *sniff*, I have a fickle interest in politics, international and environmental law, and I am an avid reader of anything from science fiction to online comics to those random trivia books. Or at least I was an avid reader, the science degree sort of killed that, I am hoping it is temporary. Brain fried. *Drool.*

 I am also obsessed with the sea. I was brought up in the country, 2 or 3 hours from the coast. It has never quite lost that magically quality of vastness, mystery and threat that it did when I was even shorter then I am now. Of course, a problem with this is I am not a very good swimmer: I control drown rather than swim.

One last thing, I use the word ‘anyway’ a lot. I can’t help it. I just do.