Psychobiological Influences of Attack Oon Lactating Females: A Varient on “Typical” House Mouse Aggression.

Many attempts have been made to understand the nature of ‘aggression’ in mice and to specify the biological factors that control behaviours that earn this epithet. In spite of the recent advances in our knowledge. Barnett’s (1) pessimistic description of aggression as “a word with many meanings and a source of much confusion” is still highly pertinent. One contributing factor is that ‘aggression’ is not a unitary concept, a fact which has been underscored by attempts to classify types of conflict behaviour. Actual discussion of the concept of aggression can be found in Moyer (2), Hinde (3) and Brain (4). Brain (5). for example, has recently re-emphasized that, as well as being subject to value-judgements, ‘aggression’ (as ‘measured’ by a range of diverse laboratory tests) taps mixtures of offensive, defensive and predatory motivations. Indeed, there is now general agreement that extrapolation between some models of attack behaviour is simply not justified.