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Some mother rats spend a lot of time licking, grooming and nursing their pups. Others seem to ignore their pups. Highly nurtured rat pups tend to grow up to be calm adults, while rat pups who receive little nurturing tend to grow up to be anxious. It turns out that the difference between a calm and an anxious rat is not genetic – it’s epigenetic. The nurturing behavior of a mother rat during the first week of life shapes her pups’ epigenomes. And the epigenetic pattern that mom establishes tends to stay put, even after the pups become adults.
