Should a female let a male take her around the bases on a first date? Maybe not -- at least if you're a lady rodent.
In a complicated experiment, scientists found that female rats who were forced to play hard to get were more likely to keep their male mates interested. But why?
Driving this behavioral dynamic is, as always with rat sex, someneurochemical reward. Boston University biologist Mary Erskine notesthat "sexual preferences come from chemical rewards, and we can be surethere are some here." Sexual climax, in fact, unleashes a flood ofpleasure-producing hormones and neurotransmitters, such as testosteroneand dopamine. [Another researcher] speculates that the higher level of arousal createdby the longer wait generates a stronger release, and a more substantialreward, thereby enforcing the preference.
Readers, what do you think? Might humans work the same way? Or does it matter when a woman gives it up?
Good Sex Is Not a Rat Race [SA]
