Aliphatic carboxylic acids comprise a group of structurally related odorants which are constituents of the body odors of mice and of their vaginal secretions in particular. Given the strong reliance of mice on olfactory social communication, these odorants should be of high behavioral relevance for this species. This notion is supported by findings that demonstrated mice to be capable of discriminating between conspecific body odors with high precision (Schaefer et al., 2002).

It is therefore the aim of the present study to 1) determine olfactory detection thresholds in CD-1 mice for aliphatic carboxylic acids, 2) assess the impact of molecular structural features such as length or branching of the carbon chain, on detectability of the odorants tested, 3) compare the threshold data obtained here to those of other species tested previously on the same set of odorants and to evaluate the impact of the number of functional olfactory receptor genes on olfactory sensitivity.