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Iain McGregor and colleagues from the University of Sydney, Australia, found that rats would stop reacting to the smell of a cat that they had been exposed to repeatedly. Yet when they sniffed a new cat, the rats bolted back into their burrows and became extra vigilant.

Dissecting the rats' brains showed that the part that responds to cat pheromones became less active the more familiar they became with each cat. However, the brains of rats presented with the odour of a new cat became more active, confirming that the rodents reacted differently to the smells of individual cats (Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, vol 32, p 1209).


Somebody's got to come up with a "new cat" spray.

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