Individual scent signatures in golden hamsters: evidence for specialization of function

Abstract

Abstract. Do all sources of scent produced by mammals provide information that allows individual discrimination and recognition, or is this information limited to a few sources? The ability of male golden hamsters, Mesocricetus auratus, to discriminate between 11 sources of scent from different individuals was investigated using an habituation paradigm. In experiment 1 males were habituated to a scent from one individual by presenting it in five trials at 15-min intervals; on the sixth trial a new individual's scent was presented. Males habituated to all scents tested but showed increased investigation to scent from a second individual only in some cases, namely flank and ear gland secretions, vaginal secretions, urine and faeces. Males did not discriminate between scents from different individuals when the scent was saliva or secretions from the feet, behind the ear, back, chest or from the sides of flank-glandectomized males. Thus males readily discriminated and recognized individual differences in some scents but not others. In experiment 2 some of the same scents were tested in an habituation task using inter-trial intervals of 24 h to examine habituation and memory for individual scents over a longer interval. In this situation males discriminated between individual scents when using urine, faeces and flank gland secretions but not when using saliva, foot, ear and vaginal secretions. The relevance of these later results to possible differences in memory for different scents is discussed. The localization of individually distinctive scent in a few scent sources suggests specialization of these scents for individual variability.