Self--grooming by rodents in social and sexual contexts

Abstract

Arguments swirl about explanations about the function of self-grooming in mammals. For instance, mammals self-groom to remove parasites that maybe transferred from a nearby opposite-sex conspecific during an encounter. Animals also self-groom when they encounter the odor of an opposite-sex conspecific because self-grooming is a re-directed behavior displayed by individuals that are torn between fleeing and fighting. Animals may self-groom to relieve stress and be a form of de-arousal. In other cases, animals may self-groom to indicate their response to conspecifics. The ubiquity of self-grooming in different contexts suggests that it serves multiple functions. Consequently, in this review, we do much to avoid arguments against these other roles for self-grooming. It is not our intent nor do we feel that it is constructive to label self-grooming as being solely a response to anxiety or stress, a mechanism to lower body temperature, or a behavior involved in care of the body surface. This limited view does not accept the possibility that self-grooming serves multiple domains. Rather, in this paper, we focus on a very specific context for self-grooming. That is, when an individual encounters the odors of a conspecific and self-grooms.