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Do mice sense fear in humans?

Mice Can Sniff Out Fear, Study Finds : NPR. Mice Can Sniff Out Fear, Study Finds Scientists have isolated an organ in a mouse's nose that can detect alarm pheromones emitted by other mice.

npr.org - Mice Can Sniff Out Fear, Study Finds - NPR

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Mice Can Sniff Out Fear, Study Finds

Watch a normal mouse responding to alarm pheromones Media no longer available

Learn about the sensor that detects fear Media no longer available

Watch a mouse that lacks the fear detector Media no longer available

Fear has its own smell. It comes from what scientists call an "alarm pheromone." Animals produce it when they're stressed, but how it works has long puzzled scientists. Now, a team in Switzerland has discovered an organ in the nose of mice that detects alarm pheromones — in effect, it smells fear. The organ, known as the Grueneberg ganglion, is a tiny bundle of cells near the tip of a mouse's nose. Marie-Christine Broillet, a biologist at the University of Lausanne, collected air samples from cages where older laboratory mice were being euthanized. When researchers exposed a live mouse to that air, the neurons in the Grueneberg ganglion started to fire. And the mouse's behavior changed. "It would just go to the opposite end of the cage and freeze," says Broillet. In another experiment, Broillet's team removed the detection cells from mice. Then, the pheromone didn't seem to scare them at all. Another type of animal that uses alarm pheromones is fish. When a fish is attacked by a bigger fish, a substance called "schreckstoff," a German word that translates as "shriek stuff," is secreted from its skin. "We're focused on this area because there are a lot of different pollutants that run off terrestrial landscapes in storm water and get into fish habitats," he says. "And because the nose is exposed to the environment, water pollution can effectively interfere with the normal functioning of the nose." Scholz has found that copper in urban runoff prevents fish from smelling the alarm pheromone.

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