Here’s What Rats In Tiny Jackets Can Tell Us About Lingerie

Another day, another bizarre rat study. But, today's is particularly intriguing: In an effort to partially explain our love of lingerie, male rats were trained to sexually prefer female rats wearing jackets over those not wearing them.

The study, presented at this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting, aimed to find out what contextual cues rats could pick up on and learn to associate with ejaculation. And, yes, part of this involved conditioning male rats to expect sex every time their partner rats wore cute little rat jackets. To do so, the researchers first put 12 virgin male rats in 14 so-called "ejaculation trials" with female rats wearing the jackets. Then, on the final test, the males got to choose between mating with a female rat with a jacket and a female rat without a jacket. They preferred the jacket-clad rats. In a second experiment, another 12 male rats were first given the opportunity to mate with jacket-wearing females followed by non-jacket-wearing females. Then, when given the option between the two, they still preferred the jacketed rats.

Does this mean that rats and sophisticated humans alike have been psychologically trained to be aroused by specific things in (and on) our partners? Perhaps. And, although this isn't necessarily a new finding, it was certainly gathered in a new way.