IRSEA Institute in Apt (France)

The purpose of the Institute is to study and understand the mechanisms underlying these functions, but also to develop methods to improve behavioural and interaction management and welfare.

Semiochemistry (from the Greek “semios” sign) studies chemical communication, the oldest and most widespread mode of transmission of information among living beings.

Created from an idea

Interact with the living world using its codes, rather than trying to bend it to our requirements.

This idea arose from the challenge of the behavioural veterinary medicine clinic: every day, millions of pet owners around the world face difficulties in cohabitation with their favorite animal.

For a long time, man has responded to these conflicting situations by trying to force the animal to change its behaviour, by means of surgeries, psychotropic drugs, coercive materials, and finally resolving himself, in many cases, to abandonment or euthanasia.

A possible strategy

Understand the adaptive process that leads the animal to adopt a behaviour that enables it to cope with the environment offered to it by man.

Answering this question changes the perspective, the animal no longer acts against the wish of man, but responds to a given context with the means of its species and according to its own possibilities derived from its individual history. Ethology, semiochemistry, seemed to us to be the most promising source of understanding and means of action.

Cat urinary tagging behaviour, one of the most common reasons for consultation for this species, was the first validation field for this approach. By analyzing the semiochemicals produced by the glands of the cat's cheeks, we were able to identify the F3 secretion now known worldwide as Feliway®. By signing the patent license agreement for this first semiochemical of synthesis, with Ceva Santé Animale laboratories, we acquired the financial means to give reality to a researcher's dream: IRSEA