Exhibition
In the flehmen response, animals draw back their lips in a manner that makes them appear to be "grimacing" or "smirking". The action, which is adopted when examining scents left by other animals either of the same species or of prey, helps expose the vomeronasal organ and draws scent molecules back toward it. This behavior allows animals to detect scents, for example from urine, of other members of their species or clues to the presence of prey. Flehming allows the animals to determine several factors, including the presence or absence of estrus, the physiological state of the animal, and how long ago the animal passed by. This particular response is recognizable, for example, in stallions when smelling the urine of a mare in heat. To detect estrus the male giraffe's flehmen response includes the actual taste-testing of the female's urine.
Cats, especially house-cats, exhibit a natural and very noticeable teeth-baring grin — the Flehmen response — in order to draw scent into the Vomeronasal organ. The organ and its purpose was described in 1813.
This behavior is not limited to predators. Horses have been well known to exhibit flehmen response.
Read more about this topic: Flehmen Response
Famous quotes containing the word exhibition:
“A mans thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (18891951)
“The hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or has visited a menagerie or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. A boy, says Plato, is the most vicious of all beasts; and in the same spirit the old English poet Gascoigne says, A boy is better unborn than untaught.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with childrens play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in playing chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (19121991)