What can prairie voles teach us about lasting love?
A small rodent that rarely lives past two years huddles with one partner for 'life'. And it is still not entirely faithful.
Prairie voles are small rodents, and scientists who study love adore them for one reason: a male and a female form a pair bond that can last their whole lives. They huddle and groom each other, share the nest and raise the pups together. Biologists define a pair bond as the strong affinity that develops between a mating pair, and the voles show that this affinity has ingredients you can find in the brain.
Two of the key ingredients are the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. In the female prairie vole, oxytocin released in the brain during sexual activity helps form the bond with her partner, and vasopressin appears to do a similar job in males. Montane voles, close relatives that are polygamous, appear to have fewer of the matching receptors. When scientists put vasopressin receptors into the brains of male montane voles, the males began to act like their bonding cousins.
Step 1: Two voles mate
Oxytocin is released in the female's brain during sexual activity
Step 2: Receptors in the reward pathway
Vasopressin and oxytocin act where the brain handles reward
Step 3: A lasting pair bond
They huddle, groom and share the nest and the pups
Before you picture a perfect rodent romance, two cautions. Prairie voles are not sexually faithful: both sexes will occasionally mate with other voles if the opportunity arises. And the researchers themselves say that considerable work is needed to know how far the vole results apply to humans.
So what do voles teach us? That in at least one mammal a lasting bond has ingredients you can trace in the brain, and that a bond is not the same thing as a marriage. A pair bond is a biological phenomenon, and married couples are not necessarily pair bonded. The voles are a clue to human love, not a blueprint for it.
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Recap
Vole bonds depend on hormones and reward-circuit receptors, but voles are a clue for human love rather than a blueprint, and a pair bond is not the same as a marriage.
💡 A trick to remember it · Think lock and key: in voles, hormones are the keys and reward-circuit receptors the locks, but for human love that key is a clue, not a master key.
Surprising fact · Adding vasopressin receptors to male montane voles made them behave like bonding prairie voles.
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (17 claims) cites at least one of these.