Precopulatory sexual behavior of male mice is changed by the exposure to tannery effluent

Although the toxic potential of tannery effluents (TE) is acknowledged, the impacts these residues have on mammals who intake water contaminated with this pollutant are not completely known. Thus, in order to broaden the knowledge about how these contaminants affect the biota, the aim of the current study is to assess different behavioral categories (e.g.: sexual odor preference, opposite-sex attraction, and sexual discrimination) related to the sexual motivation and pre-copulation of male Swiss mice subjected to TE intake for 30 days, at concentrations 0.8% and 22%. The animals were subjected to locomotor performance evaluation through the Basso Mouse Scale (BMS), as well as to the open field (OF), odor preference (OPT), sexual orientation (SOT) and to scent marking tests (SMT) one week before the experiment ended. Our results evidenced that the treatments did not affect the animals' locomotor activity (in OF and BMS) or caused changes compatible to anxiogenic or anxiolytic behavior (in OF). However, mice exposed to TE (at both concentrations) presented discriminatory capacity deficit in the OPT test at the time to distinguish conspecific odors from the same sex, and from the opposite sex. They randomly explored (without preference) males and females, did not responded to stimuli in the SOT test, as well as did not appear capable of detecting female odor (in estrus phase) during the SMT. Thus, the current study was pioneer in evidencing that TE can influence the reproduction and the population dynamics of small rodents who intake water contaminated with the pollutant.