Hello you wonderful people and welcome to your Daily Fun Fact From Flora ,
Today we’re keeping things brief and weird.
We’re talking about hormones.
Hormones are pretty cool. They are chemical messengers that are secreted into the bloodstream that act as signals to other cells or tissues.
But how do we knowwhat effects certain hormones have on animals? How do we figure out what chemicals actually do what? There’s a lot of stuff happening in a body — especially the more complicated ones like ours.
Well first of all you need to establish a causal link (none of that correlation bullshit thank you) between the presence of the hormone and whatever behaviour it is that you think it might cause.
If you then put the hormone back in you should see the behaviour come back. Not only that, but the amount of hormone you put back in should have an effect — i.e. if you put a lot of the hormone in you would expect a high probability of seeing your behaviour.
So what scientists like to do is cut out the gland that they think is emitting the hormone (or a precursor of the hormone) and inject different doses of the hormone into the animal and see what the fuck happens.
This has led to some very weird experiments involving sex hormones.
Androgens are male sex hormones and if you inject them into female guinea pigs while they are still in utero — things come out a bit odd.
Not only do they permanently suppress all female sexual behaviours but they will also actually start performing male sexual behaviours even though they have no way of fertilising a female.
If you do this in dogs they also become masculinised in their bodies (their morphology) and in their behaviour.
They become much more aggressive and socially dominant (whoop feminisim ish?).
Meaning that won’t adhere to the normal social dominance hierarchies of small, stable, social groups of dogs.
Oh and they also develop a pseudo penis.
Now you might thing Flora — it’s literally a female. It’s not going to look like a real penis.
BAM
Again, they cannot fertilise females (because they themselves are still females) but they HAVE A LITERAL PENIS.
Hormones are weird.
Don’t go injecting androgens into your unborn children please.
Love Flora xxx