Incels Behaving Badly

Male mice are freaked out by bananas, and now we know why. 

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal discovered the fruit fear while analyzing spiking stress hormones in male mice when they are near pregnant or lactating females. The boys are triggered by a compound in the females’ urine called n-pentyl acetate, which also happens to be the compound that gives bananas their smell!

The discovery was an accident. “The whole thing came as a surprise, since we were not looking for this in particular and found it by accident,” Jeffrey Mogil, the study’s lead author and professor of psychology at McGill, told Live Science. “The pregnant females were in our lab for another experiment, and one of our grad students realized that the males began acting weird.”

To see if exposure to n-pentyl acetate from a different source would also trigger murine mania, the researchers purchased banana oil from a supermarket and gave the male mice a whiff. Yup – their stress levels spiked. 

And why would pregnant females want to scare off males? According to the study, published in ScienceAdvances, “male mice, especially virgin males, are well known to engage in infanticidal aggression to advance their genetic fitness.” 

Incels behaving badly – not a shock!

Photo credit: Rudmer Zwerver / Tanja Ivanova via Live Science