NewScientist: Mice are rarely the source of romantic inspiration, but it now appears that male mice may serenade potential mates with melodies approaching the complexity of bird song. Mouse songs are sung at ultrasonic frequencies, which is why no one has noticed their complexity before, nor indeed been moved to celebrate the tunes in romantic poetry.

Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo, of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, US, recorded the vocalisations made by male mice in the presence of female pheromones. They then digitally modified them to drop the pitch by several octaves into the range of human hearing. You can listen to a male mouse producing a snatch of song, here, and a more determined croon, here.

If I had a decent cellphone, It’d make a sweet ringtone!