flehmen

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Flehmen response

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• (verb): see flehm
• (noun): flehm; (nonstandard) flehman, Flehmen, Flehman

From German flehmen, from Upper Saxon German flemmen (“to look spiteful”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈfleɪmən/
• Rhymes: -eɪmən
• Homophone: flamen

flehmen (third-person singular simple present flehmens, present participle flehmening, simple past and past participle flehmened)

1. Alternative form of flehm
   • 1994, Lee Boyd, Katherine Albro Houpt, Przewalski's Horse: The History and Biology of an Endangered Species, page 246:

     One can observe mucus dripping from the nostrils of stallions after they flehmen.

flehmen (countable and uncountable, plural flehmens)

1. (especially in the compound "flehmen response") Flaring of the lip in mammals, associated with intensive smelling; flehming.
   • 2009, Barbara Triggs, Wombats, page 65:

     During the preliminary phase of courtship between captive animals, Matthew Gaughwin observed flehmen on a number of occasions when the male sniffed intensely at areas of ground where the female had previously urinated and once when the male had sniffed the female's cloacal region.

   • 2006, Ernst Knobil, Jimmy D. Neill, Knobil and Neill's Physiology of Reproduction, page 2043:

     Ladewig and Hart showed that when a male goat displayed flehmen after investigating female urine containing a tracer material, the urine was found throughout the vomeronasal organ.

   • 2003, IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group, The Living Elephants : Evolutionary Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation, page 99:

     Behaviors recorded included sniffing, flehmen, blowing, avoidance, and penile erections.

• flehmen response

Borrowed from Upper Saxon German flemmen (“to look spiteful”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈfleːmən/

• Audio:

  (file)

flehmen (weak, third-person singular present flehmt, past tense flehmte, past participle geflehmt, auxiliary haben)

1. to flehm, to exhibit the flehmen response

• → Dutch: flemen
• → English: flehm, flehmen