Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create mice that show no fear of felines, a development that may shed new light on mammal behavior and the nature of fear itself.
Scientists at Tokyo University say they were able to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats—showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.
"Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said research team leader Ko Kobayakawa.
In his experiment, the genetically altered mice approached cats, even snuggled up to them and played with them. Kobayakawa said he chose domesticated cats that were docile and thus less likely to pounce.
Kobayakawa said his findings, published in the science magazine Nature last month, should help researchers shed further light on how the brain processes information about the outside world.
Kim Dae-soo, a neural genetics professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, who was not involved in the research, said Kobayakawa's research could explain further what fear is, and how to control it.
"People have thought mice are fearful of cats because cats prey on them, but that's not the case," Kim said.
"If we follow the pathway of related signals in the brain, I think we could discover what kind of networks in the brain are important for controlling fear."
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This is cool science to be sure, but I believe Kim might be incorrect in his above statement.
"People have thought mice are fearful of cats because cats prey on them, but that's not the case," Kim said.If we follow this science, then this shows that fear has a genetic component - no problem here with that. I think almost everything has a genetic component of some sort.
But follow me on this...
In their nature setting, cats are obligate carnivores that do feed on mice among other things. Thus the mice that are fearful of cats survive and those are are not fearful of a meat eating predators die. Sounds pretty simple. Therefore, if there is a "fear gene", then it has been pushed forward to future generations...basically making the mouse that we know today.
Kim and the guys at KAIST have found a way to disable this "fear gene" and create a mouse that isn't scared of cats.
So, I don't quite understand how Kim can state that mice aren't fearful because cats prey on them.....clearly most cats did once prey on them at some point in the past and that is why this switched on genetic component is being expressed in modern mice.
So in my line of thinking, mice are fearful of cats because it is a learned (or genetically programmed) behavior of survival.
Perhaps I am missing something, but I think Kim was being a big too geeky for the general public in that statement.
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