It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's seen The Great Mouse Detective lately, but scientists at Tulane University in New Orleans have discovered that when caged together with a female, male mice will gradually adjust the pitch of their squeaking to effectively "sing" in harmony, wooing the impressionable female mouse. (If you've been to a Grizzly Bear show recently, you know exactly how this works.)
The study—conducted to analyze the effects of certain diseases on our ability to communicate—has contradicted previous scientific consensus that mice aren't able to adapt their voices in the same way as, say, birds or humans can.
"We are claiming that mice have limited versions of the brain and behavior traits for vocal learning that are found in humans for learning speech and in birds for learning song," says Tulane University's Dr. Erich Jarvis. "In mice, they don't exist at the advanced levels found in humans and song-learning birds, but they also are not completely absent as commonly assumed."
Personally, I'm waiting for the scientific study that proves once and for all that mice can also produce hit records for Gorillaz, The Black Keys and Norah Jones, but in the meantime, this is a landmark moment for musically inclined rodents everywhere.
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