Mice can learn to fight by watching tiny rodent cage matches, study finds

Mice can learn to fight , study finds Brain scientists set up "gladiator style" cage matches for mice — and found that simply observing fighting matches can rewire a mouse's brain to resemble those who actually fought. NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio RSS link Science Mice can learn to fight , study finds November 9, 20264:39 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Pien Huang MICE WATCH MICE FIGHT Listen · Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed <iframe src="https://www. npr. org/player/embed/nx-s1-6027938/nx-s1-9997783" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript Brain scientists set up "gladiator style" cage matches for mice — and found that simply observing fighting matches can rewire a mouse's brain to resemble those who actually fought. Transcript SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Brain scientists are finding that a mouse's brain can be primed for battle simply . As NPR's Pien Huang reports, their findings come from a series of mouse cage fights. PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Two mice swipe at each other in a cage. Another one watches from the top. ANNEGRET FALKNER: We set this up to look a little bit like a gladiator arena, so the mouse is kind of above the two mice fighting on a platform. HUANG: Annegret Falkner is an associate professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. FALKNER: Mice fight a lot in the wild. You know, mice form hierarchies, normally. They defend their territories.(SOUNDBITE OF MICE SQUEAKING)HUANG: But here in the lab, these fights are a kind of performance - a rodent wrestling match, if you will. FALKNER: The fight is always fixed. So we have these mice that are sort of trained to be losers. They perform loser-y (ph) behavior, and then we have mice that are very experienced. They do a lot of winner-y (ph) behaviors. HUANG: The mouse on the platform observes a series of live, four-minute cage fights over about a week. At the end of it, the spectator mice try their skills in their own cage fights.(SOUNDBITE OF MICE SQUEAKING)HUANG: Jorge Iravedra Garcia, a postdoctoral researcher in Falkner's lab, says the mice that watched fights mimicked what they saw. JORGE IRAVEDRA GARCIA: They were the ones that were starting the fights. And in between, they held these sorts of postures that meant that they were ready to engage. HUANG: In other words, the observer mice learned to be more vigilant and aggressive.