General arousal hypothesis

The goal of this paper was to determine which of three hypotheses, redirected behavior, general arousal, or olfactory communication, best explained the response of meadow voles to the odors of conspecifics and heterospecifics. Briefly, voles self-groomed more in response to odors of opposite-sex conspecifics as compared to those of same-sex conspecifics odors, to those of heterospecifics, vanilla extract, and clean cotton. The data were not consistent with the predictions of the redirected behavior hypothesis (Fentress 1968 Delius 1979 van Erp et al. 1994). If self-grooming was a redirected... 

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