Salivary cues in the mouse: a preliminary study

Two experiments were designed to explore the possible role of mouse saliva in modulating social interactions. Experiment 1 examined the investigatory sniffing behavior of an intact male toward either another intact male or castrated male. It was found that castrates received more mouth, ears-eyes, and hind sniffing than intacts. In addition, the temporal patterning of mouth and ears-eyes sniffing was found to be different for the two stimulus conditions. The findings of Experiment 2 indicated that saliva from testosterone-treated castrates contained aggression-promoting cues relative to saliva from castrated control animals. Possible sources of the salivary chemosignal were discussed.