Abstract
IT is frequently stated that prepuberal castration prevents the appearance of copulatory behavior in the male rat (1, 2, 3), but none of the published reports which have come to our attention includes any account of systematic attempts to elicit sexual responses in adult males castrated before puberty. Ball (4) has described the appearance of masculine mating activity in prepuberally castrated male rats treated with estrogen; but since Ball did not test for the presence of this behavior in untreated castrates the results reported cannot be attributed exclusively to the effects of the hormone. The present study was conducted to describe and measure the masculine mating reactions of prepuberally castrated male rats before and after the administration of ovarian hormones. Eight male rats were castrated at 21 to 23 days of age and maintained in individual cages throughout the experiment.
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