Yahoo! News: Study: Mice Sing in the Presence of MatesScientists have known for decades that male lab mice produce high-frequency sounds — undetectable by human ears — when they pick up the scent of a female mouse. This high-pitched babble is presumably for courtship, although scientists are not certain.
But it turns out those sounds are more complex and interesting than previously thought.
"It soon became ... apparent that these vocalizations were not random twitterings but songs," said researcher Timothy Holy. "There was a pattern to them. They sounded a lot like bird songs."
The first thing that comes to mind is how wonderful this is, and it's not just me:
"There was joy in this discovery," Holy said. "We didn't expect it."
Unfortunately, in the very next paragraph, that feeling is dispelled and replaced with horror:
The finding opens the possibility of using mice to study and develop treatments for autism and other communication disorders, said Holy, the lead author and assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the university's medical school.
Every time we find that animals are more highly developed than we gave them credit for, it makes them
better candidates for research, rather than giving them enough character to pierce that wall researchers lift before them to make it possible for them to justify the things they do to these amazing creatures in the name of "progress."
