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Singing Mice and Brain Chemistry
Shirlockc writes "The Public Library of Science has a research article on how male mice actually sing in the presence of females. They actually posted some of the audios adjusted for human ears as these songs are ultrasonic. The authors are comparing these warbles to bird songs. The songs are quite complex so do the mice learn them and/or improve on them? This can be a potential model for investigating how brain chemistry works during learning."
Maybe to get help in the female department, you can try developing some social skills.
This isn't "dumb research". It actually helps understand things like language development in humans, learning processes in animals and such, since songs (birdsong included) are quite complex.
Don't be ignorant. Examining the behavior of animals that can be thoroughly experimented on is integral to neurological and psychological research. Unless you're about to volunteer yourself for the kind of stuff we can do to lab rats, I suggest you pipe down.
"I'm seriously wondering where we manage to get so much money from in order to just waste it on dumb research."
This is why unimaginative people wouldn't be good scientists. From the writeup:
"This can be a potential model for investigating how brain chemistry works during learning."
The study isn't about putting on an all-mouse musical, it's about animal behavior, which has all sorts of other applications. Just because you can't imagine what those might be doesn't make it useless research.
Ever heard of diminishing returns? Apparently not. Ever heard of serendipity? Didn't think so. I'm glad there's people out there whose curiosity pushes them to investigate things that seem trivial and obvious, because no one knows where the next big breakthrough will come from.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
With this news we should be able to program small robots to seek out the singers and kill them. Or draw female mice to a killer robot with a fake male mouse song.
Phillip