Talk:Flehmen response

Flehmen in non-mammals
although am yet to find any reliable references for it, i would suggest that snakes also exhibit flehmen to when using their forked tongues. The Vomeronasal organ is used in this process (see article). Will try to find out abit more about whether this is true flehmen. If indeed it is, the article would need a rewrite to remove references to mammalian only responses. Goldfinger820 22:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

grimace similar to the flehmen response
"A grimace similar to the flehmen response may also be seen in association with pain. In horses it is often associated with low grade abdominal pain." Should a flehmen-like response be included in the article? As article is about the response, not behaviour that resembles the response, I wouldn't think so. Poor little horsies :-( --Shirt58 (talk) 11:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Recent article in Nature Neuroscience
... suggests that the disgust face has a different function, serving to reduce rather than facilitate sensory reception, at least in humans.

On the other hand, I've just sent them a letter suggesting that the human smile could be a vestigial remnant of the flehmen reaction.

Cheshire cat
Do we have a source for the suggestion that Tenniel's cat is supposed to be flehmening? It's sure not what my cats look like when they do it; seems like an OR connection to me. --jpgordon:==( o ) 16:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Tiger picture
Concerning that tiger picture: Is that really Flehmen behavior?

Do animals really stick out their tongue that far when showing Flehmen behavior? I have been used to think of Flehmen as an animal just having their mouth open, possibly the tip of the tongue showing. But sticking out the whole tongue? --93.212.237.194 (talk) 10:24, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

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Discovery
I think that it would be useful to add more information to the Discovery section of the article. How and when did Frederik Ruysch discover this behaviour? In what animal(s) what it originally described? --Ksilver19 (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Add some pictures with more familiar animals
Add some pictures with more familiar animals: pets, like household cats. Jidanni (talk) 12:22, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Horse Flehmen Response
According to the text, " in young horses, both colts (males) and fillies (females) exhibit flehmen behavior toward other conspecifics with neither sex performing the behavior more than the other." But the very next line states: "However, it has been reported that young colts flehmen up to five times more frequently than fillies..." This is confusing because it directly contradicts the preceding sentence. Is it that the "reports" are mistaken? Are the "reports" anecdotal and thus not taken into account? If so, why even mention them? Further explanation is needed to resolve the inconsistency. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 04:25, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Reproductive Synchrony
I think this section is written in a very ambiguous and confusing manner and badly needs a rewrite. I'll pinpoint a few of the issues:

"Flehmen rates between females anticipated birth synchrony."

Okay, this is reading like someone conducted a study and compared the Flehmen rates of females (I assume the rates at which the females made a flehmen response) to each other and found that when the flehmen rate of one female was similar to that of another, it was a strong indicator the two females would give birth around the same time, but this is not entirely clear. Perhaps it indicated the two females were themselves born around the same time. And why were the females making the flehmen response? To inhale the pheromones of other females and intentionally synchronize with them? If a study were conducted, why is it not mentioned? What were the parameters? Methods for tracking the flehmen response? So many unanswered questions.

Next issue: "Additionally, the level of synchrony was predicted by the frequency of female urine sampling during the previous year."

Again, an experiment or study appears to have been conducted, but not mentioned. Was the "sampling" done by scientists collecting urine samples? Or by female subjects exhibiting the flehmen response and thereby "sampling" the scents and pheromones given off by the urine? And what does "level of synchrony" mean? How is that measured? If I were to take a leap and make missing connections, I might guess the sentence is stating that the more times a female made the flehmen response to another female's urine in the previous year, the closer the two females estrous cycles became temporally synched. But, again, not enough information is given to confidently make this conclusion.

Another issue: "Flehmen is a mechanism used by female sable antelopes to manipulate the timing of both conception and birth of offspring."

How does Flehmen control conception or birth timing? Through the method of estrous synchronization? Thus far, it appears to be implied that a female sable antelope can intentionally synchronize estrous cycles with other females by engaging the flehmen response more frequently. Does it follow that the female can choose any timing it wants by changing flehmen frequency? Wouldn't the maximum timing shift be restricted to the difference between the estrous cycles of the females? Is it a conscious choice? Is it purely instinctive? Once females have synchronized estrous cycles, are the conception and birth cycles no longer adjustable? After all, you can't over-synchronize, can you? Again, this could use more explanation.

Last one: "In the American bison, flehmen behavior in females has also been shown to stimulate the onset of estrus and copulation synchronization."

I am not sure if this one is just a typographical error. The "copulation synchronization" actually links to the article titled "Menstrual Synchronization," which, while related, are not the same thing. In fact, the "Menstrual Synchronization" article does not mention copulation synchronization whatsoever, so that is an issue in itself. A linked article should at the bare minimum address the term to which it is linked. But the other issue is that the linked article actually implies that menstrual synchronization is somewhat of a myth. Unless I misread it, the article implies statistical variation suggests the phenomenon doesn't actually exist. If that's true, then how can flehmen behavior in the American Bison "stimulate the onset" of a phenomenon that doesn't exist? Perhaps the linked article was a mistake, and "copulation synchronization" is the real phenomenon that was intended. Of course, one might assume that copulation is an active, voluntary, conscious behavior under the control of the participants, so no special mechanism would be required to synchronize it other than the conscious choice to copulate at the same time as others, but perhaps the "copulation synchronization" can be unconsciously regulated as a byproduct of the time-shifted and synchronized estrous cycle. The sequence being that a shifted estrous cycle would cause different pheromone-emission timing and thus attract a mate at a different time as well and ultimately and consequently shift the timing of copulation. Again, it would be better for this to be spelled out for the reader in detail, so they are not forced to make connections that perhaps are not even there. I am really just guessing at all of this and have no clue what is accurate and what is not. That is not what I expect when reading an encyclopedia article. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 06:32, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

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