The Song of the Mouse

Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell deciphers the ultrasonic chatter, shown here plotted on a spectrograph, of a deer mouse. 

Kalcounis-Rueppell has now translated the ultrasonic utterances of the wild mice from her first study site and is working on their Eastern North American relatives. Her research and that of others suggest that some songs are produced only by males or only by females. There are even greater differences from one species to the next, akin to those, say, between a robin and a wren. Perhaps these differences help the mice tell each other apart. Some species’ songs get more complex as a mouse grows older. The songs may be innate; young mice raised in the lab by mice of a different strain retain their own strain’s song. Kalcounis-Rueppell and her students have evidence of vocalizations in four wild species and suspect that many others sing. The world of rodents, long thought mostly quiet, may be full of songs, broadcast short distances, from one animal to another, songs that we still know very little about.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Mystery-of-the-Singing-Mice.html#ixzz1K8GnTQs

"I wanna be loved by you, just you, and nobody else but youuuu, I wanna be loved by you, la-ah-ah, boop boop bee-doop"