Parenting in the animal world: Turning off the infanticide instinct
Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - 06:30
in Biology & Nature
Many bachelor mammals, including lions, mountain gorillas, monkeys, and mice, attack and kill the offspring of other males—a form of infanticide—yet display parental behavior once they themselves become fathers. Now, scientists at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have discovered two small brain regions that control which of these very opposite behaviors a male mouse will exhibit. Detailed in The EMBO Journal, the experiments show how activity patterns in two forebrain regions determine whether males have the urge to act paternally towards mouse pups or to attack them.