If mice knew anything about how relationships work in 2024, this would be a full-fledged ‘red flag’. A group of researchers from the University of Delaware (USA) has proven that among mice, males use females as a lure to avoid being attacked by other aggressive males. When a ‘bully’ engages with one, the victim runs towards a female and briefly interacts with her so that his pursuer is distracted, focuses on the attractive companion and thus escapes the harassment. It turns out that this tactic, which the authors have called ‘bait and switch’, works best to avoid conflict.
As explained in the magazine ‘PLOS Biology’the researchers recorded the interaction of groups of two male and two female mice for five hours. Like many other animals, mice have social hierarchies, and in almost every group recorded, one male was always significantly more aggressive toward the other.
Social interactions, the authors say, can be difficult to study objectively, so they decided to use a machine learning approach to analyze how aggression occurred and was resolved. In total, they observed more than 3,000 altercations between the males, and the machine learning algorithm helped the researchers determine the most likely responses to the aggression and whether these actions resolved or, on the contrary, deepened the conflict.
The scientists discovered that the male mouse that faced aggression often ran towards one of the females. This may have been a “bait and switch” tactic, as the aggressive male would typically follow the other male but then interact with the female instead of continuing the attack.
Some other tactics, even if they avoided aggression for a moment, then escalated into full-on fights. However, the researchers found that this was not the case after the decoy strategy. While it can be an effective way to reduce the intensity of conflicts, the ‘trick’ can entail costs for the victim, such as sacrificing time with the females. All in all, with a female present, fights rarely occurred, with the male mice often staying further away from each other and the aggressive mouse continuing to interact with the female. This masculine behavior is typical of rodent societies, but how many times can the experiences of animals be extrapolated to ours.
#fight #mouse #female #distraction
