Sexual Behaviour and Sexual Motivation in the Female Rat

Abstract

Is the sexual behaviour of the female rat pure reflex, or does oestrus also stimulate active efforts to approach the male? Male rats will learn to run an alley if rewarded with an oestrous female, and their performance in the alley is then controlled by the same hormone that controls the mating acts, testosterone¹. Attempts have been made to train female rats to learn an alley in which the reward was a copulating male, but they did not learn to run any faster than others rewarded with an impotent male (and no copulation) (refs. 2 and 3, and M. Williams and R. F. D., unpublished results). The control females, however, learned very rapidly to run to an impotent male; and it is possible, therefore, that the effects of this (presumably social) reward are so strong as to mask any additional, specifically sexual, reward that mating itself may provide. In the experiment reported here, the choice of an individual female for a potent (copulating) as against an impotent male was examined, using a T-maze.