Why Men Love Lingerie: Rat Study Offers Hints

Male rats can be trained to find female rats sexier when clad in tiny jackets.
Credit: Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino

Just as lingerie turns on human males, tiny jackets do the same for male rats, a new study finds.

In an unusual study, researchers allowed virgin male rats to have sex with females wearing special rodent “jackets.” Later, when scientists gave the males a chance to mate again, the animals preferred to mate with jacket-wearing female rats rather than with unclad ones.

The findings suggest that male animals can learn to associate the sight and feel of clothing with sex. [51 Sultry Facts About Sex]

In other words, male rats learn that “each time my partner wears lingerie [a jacket], I’m going to have sex,” said study co-author Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, a psychologist working in the lab of psychologist Jim Pfaus at Concordia University in Montreal. 

In previous studies, Zunino, Pfaus, and their colleagues trained rats to associate a particular odor (almond) with having sex, and male rats preferentially mated with females bearing that scent.

This time, the researchers wanted to know whether rats could learn to associate sex with other contextual cues, such as texture. In one experiment, a dozen virgin male rats were allowed to mate with females wearing jackets. Then, the males were put in a chamber with two sexually receptive female rats, one wearing a jacket and one “au naturel.”

In general, when rats do the deed, the male approaches the female from behind and grabs hold of her on both sides, which excites her, Zunino told Live Science. If a human experimenter grabs the female in this way, she does a little wiggling dance, he said. If the female is wearing a jacket, the male will feel it with his whiskers while they are mating.

The trained male rats chose to mate with the jacket-clad females more often than with the unjacketed females, the researchers found. In addition, the males made more mounting attempts and ejaculated more quickly with the jacketed females.

In a second experiment, the researchers exposed virgin male rats first to jacketed females that were sexually receptive, then to unjacketed females that were not sexually receptive. Then they put the rats in a chamber similar to the first experiment, with one female wearing a jacket and one not wearing a jacket.

Again, the trained males preferred to mate with the jacketed females, mounted them more often and ejaculated more quickly, compared to with the unjacketed females.

Zunino and his colleagues also wanted to know how the jacket experience affected activity in the rats’ brains. Right after the male rats mated with the jacketed females, the researchers sacrificed the animals and injected a dye into their brains that shows the activity of a gene called c-fos, which is a measure of neural activation. Specifically, they looked at c-fos activity in the pleasure centers of the rats’ brains, including regions called the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens.

Males that mated with jacket-wearing females showed more c-fos activity in these brain areas than did males who mated with jacketless females, preliminary results showed.

Taken together, the researchers experiments reveal that rats can learn to associate sex with a variety of contextual cues, including the texture of clothing. While rats are quite different from humans, lingerie may have a similar effect on human males, Zunino said.

The findings were presented Nov. 17 at the 44th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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Bridgeport Village lingerie heist victim says ‘professional’ shoplifters also …

The owner of the Bridgeport Village lingerie store where shoplifters made off with thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise believes the same people are responsible for countless other thefts in and around the metro area.

Carolyn Boyd, owner of Posh Lingerie, said she’s fielded calls from other retailers who recognize the five people caught on her store’s security camera and believe them to be serial shoplifters who have targeted stores from Washington Square to the Woodburn Premium Outlets.

“They knew what they were doing,” Boyd said.

As police work to catch the shoplifters, The Oregonian set out to answer a few more questions about the heist.

Q. Police originally estimated $2,400 worth of lingerie had been stolen, but Boyd said it’s closer to $3,000. How much underwear does that add up to?

A. The biggest ticket item was the store’s most expensive robe, a silk and velvet number valued at $1,600. The thieves also took several blankets and about a dozen pairs of pajamas. No bras or underwear were stolen.

Q. A couple of days after the theft, most of the stolen goods turned up at the Bridgeport Village Crate Barrel. How did that happen?

A. Most likely, one of the shoplifters or an accomplice dropped them off. Soon after news of the crime began appearing in local media, someone approached Crate Barrel staff and handed over the stolen items. The person claimed the merchandise was found behind a Dumpster, but Boyd is skeptical.

“If the tags said ‘Posh,’ wouldn’t you return them to Posh?” she said. “My thought is they didn’t want to return it to us, because they knew we would recognize them.”

Q. Can the returned clothes be resold?

A. Yes. “Luckily, everything was in great shape with the tags still on,” Boyd said. The exception: One lingerie set was missing a pair of panties.

Q. How did the thieves pull it off?

A. They waited until the end of the day. Boyd had gone home, leaving one employee in the store to help customers and work the register. While two of the shoplifters asked the store employee for help, the other three stuffed merchandise into empty shopping bags from a nearby store. “They knew what they were doing,” she said.

Q. Do police have any leads on the suspects?

A. No arrests have been made, but Tualatin police have “some investigative leads,” said Jennifer Massey, a spokeswoman for the department. Boyd said she’s fielded a steady stream of tips. Among them, two apartment complex landlords told Boyd the thieves used to live in their complex, but were kicked out after attempting to sell stolen goods from their unit.

Q. If the suspects are caught, what charges will they face?

A. Massey said the high-value items could result in felony theft charges.

Q. Who steals from a lingerie store, anyway?

A. You wouldn’t think it would be a “hot ticket item to steal,” Boyd said, but this is the second time in the past year she’s been hit with a major theft. Last year, shoplifters stole $1,100 worth of merchandise. The culprits were never caught.

–Kelly House

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