New power for human males!

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's classic humanocentric hubris. Maybe it's more a factor of just being huge males that stress them. And our awesome planet conquering carnivorous viciousness has nothing to do with it.

Nope.

We found that exposure of mice and rats to male but not female experimenters produces pain inhibition. Male-related stimuli induced a robust physiological stress response that results in stress-induced analgesia. This effect could be replicated with T-shirts worn by men, bedding material from gonadally intact and unfamiliar male mammals, and presentation of compounds secreted from the human axilla. Experimenter sex can thus affect apparent baseline responses in behavioral testing.

Rats would probably do it, but mice are freaked out by the presence of rats anyway.