Newborn rat pups appear helpless little pink bundles of potential behaviour. They are engaged in an intricate behavioural dance with their parents for survival.
Newborn pups play an active role in eliciting maternal behaviour from their mothers.
In this lecture we will explore some of the factors that control this reciprocal partnership. Rat mothers are attracted by the sight, sound and odour of their pups. Pups utilise perioral sensations to locate and suckle from their mother's nipples. The lecture concludes with a model put forward by Carlson that suggests how estrogen interacts with brain regions involved in maternal behaviours. They rinsed the olfactory mucosa of virgin female rats with zinc sulphate, which temporarily eliminates olfactory sensitivity.