Let Me Guess: The Mice Were All Dudes, Right?

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn For Women and Couples

Movie nights around my house generally start with the same basic discussion – or perhaps “negotiation” would be the better word for it. My husband and I actually have a fair amount in common when it comes to movie genres; we both love dumb slapstick comedies, low budget sci-fi, old monster movies and basically anything in which Kevin Spacey plays a sociopathic creep.

At the same time, individually there are certain areas each of us enjoy which make the other want to break things and/or vomit.

For instance, my husband loves sports-related documentaries, whereas if I hear the theme music from ESPN’s “30 For 30” series even one more time, I’m going to set fire to the living room after knocking him unconscious with my heftiest cast iron skillet (and yes, I do own more than one cast iron skillet; you can never have too many of those things).

Read on…

Scientists Must Be Getting Really Hard Up For Porn-Related Experiments

Researchers at Keio University in Tokyo recently conducted an experiment with a group of lab mice, in which the researchers played a few different videos on iPods and then observed which of the videos the mice chose to spend their time watching.

The three videos reportedly included “one of mice sniffing each other, another of two mice fighting, and the third of a copulating pair.”

Now, I’m all for science and intellectual inquiry and the advancement of human knowledge and all that good stuff, but somehow the image of a bunch of clipboard-wielding Japanese researchers tracking the movements and video viewing choices of a group of lab mice sounds less like science and more like something a group of bored geeks came up with when they were too stoned.

I can almost hear them all arguing, far too passionately, about whether the action movie clip used ought to feature Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme.

Does ANYBODY Want To Watch Sniffing Videos?

Not too surprisingly, the subject mice were “least interested in the sniffing video.”

I mean, think about it; even if the men sniffing each other included two of your favorite Hollywood leading men, how long would it take for the two hunks snorting around each other’s bodies to go from being a mildly amusing novelty to a profoundly disturbing image from which you wanted to run away at top speed?

For me, I think the threshold would be about right around 90 seconds – or considerably less if the two fellows started sniffing at each other’s crotches like a couple of overstimulated Labradors.

Given a choice between the sniffing and the fucking, “65% of the mice spent more time watching copulation,” which, to be honest, only makes me wonder about the other 35% of the mice.

Were they actually watching the video the whole time, or had they simply fallen asleep, the way my husband does every time we try to watch a movie without sufficient car chases and gunfire?

Warning: These Mice Could Be American Television Executives

When the mice were given the choice between watching other mice fight or fuck, violence won out by a small margin, despite the fact the mice had to know nobody was going to indict them for indecency, or fire them from the lab for watching porn at work.

While the researchers theorized the results of their study may simply “reflect which videos the mice find most socially informative” and “fight scene might have been the most interesting as it revealed information about dominance relationships,” I think it’s just as likely the researchers used American mice, who brought all sorts of cultural bias to the experiment.

Not only that, but this was a very small sample in terms of the subject population, and they were hardly selected at random. According to the researchers, they used “40 male mice with no sexual experience.”

I knew it! Not only were the mice all dudes, but they were virgin dudes. Accordingly, how could they possibly appreciate the subtleties and technique on display in the mouse porn when they have no frame of reference for the sexual action?

While we’re at it, how could these researchers possibly be surprised to find out a bunch of immature dude-mice would be drawn to action flicks? If they run the experiment again with 40 female mice, will anyone think to throw the rodent equivalent of “The Notebook” into the mix to see what happens, or will they just collectively scratch their heads over why the fighting video seems to have lost so much popularity since its debut weekend?

I’m not the only woman who is skeptical about the conclusions of this experiment, although I admit my resistance is somewhat less scholarly.

“There is a debate over whether time spent with a specific cue is a good proxy for preference,” said Barbara König from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “Mice might just need longer to gain information on whether the objects signal any kind of danger.”

I don’t know about that; the pack rats around here sure seem to recognize danger pretty quick every time I come at them with my frying pan.

Maybe I should try distracting them with a Van Damme movie before initiating my attack?