Here’s some news you desperately need today: A team of intrepid scientists has boldly gone where others have never dared, into the minds of tiny prairie voles in love. By studying the neural circuits ...

The vital role of oxytocin—the “love hormone”—for social attachments is being called into question. More than forty years of pharmacological and behavioral research has pointed to oxytocin receptor ...

Prairie voles are one of the few mammal species that mates for life. They are socially monogamous and form lifelong bonds with their partners, making nests and raising pups together and showing high ...

Ladies: So, you’re at a party and are several drinks in. Suddenly, you are overwhelmed by a sudden desire to get close to your boo, who is hanging out with his boys on the other side of the room. You ...

If the male prairie vole were a human guy, we might call him “highly evolved.” Among the world’s 5,500 mammalian species, he’s among the roughly 5% who, for the most part, mate for life, and who stick ...

Using cutting-edge gene editing technology researchers have engineered prairie voles with no oxytocin receptors. These notoriously monogamous mammals were thought to rely on oxytocin to form crucial ...

From enraptured voles and space robots on the moon to brain gears and dense objects, it was a heck of a week in science. Let's take a look at some of the most interesting developments over the past ...

There's more to love than a single hormone. That's the conclusion of a study of prairie voles that were genetically altered to ignore signals from the "love hormone" oxytocin. The study, published in ...

Turns out, it's not just human couples that suffer when one partner drinks significantly more than the other. New research reveals that unequal drinking also takes it toll on prairie vole couples, ...

In regard to my previous post, concerning possible evolutionary advantages of culturally enforced sexual monogamy, several readers wrote in to ask about prairie voles. Here's a brief excerpt from our ...

Most mammals have "love 'em and leave 'em" relationships, but not the prairie vole. They mate for life, sharing nest-building duties and an equal role in raising their young. It looks a lot like a ...