I think Mice are Nice.
Steph's mouse encounter got me thinking about mice. Now that I am a developmental neurobiologist (the more syllables one uses in the job title, the more important one's job is, ne c'est pas?) I spend a lot of time with mice.
They aren't very popular, despite being quite the cute and fuzzy critters if you can ever get them to stand still. My sister told me they seem like mammalian insects, which is a pretty good way of summing it up. They move so fast relative to their size that it's more of a scuttle than a run, and more like a cockroach than like a dog. Also, as another friend found out, they have objectionable parenting habits. Her nieces and nephew found that they had trapped a mouse in a non-lethal cage trap, where it gave birth. So the nieces and nephew wanted to help out the mommy mouse; they kept it in the cage and fed it and so forth, and all went swimmingly for about a week--until they woke up one morning to discover that the mouse had EATEN HER BABIES!
This is pretty common if the mother is stressed or isn't getting enough protein, but you can imagine the effect it had on the poor kids (the human kids; the effect on the mouse pups is pretty obvious).
It pains me to speak ill of animals that have given so much to science, including the technology that just won Dr. Mario Capecchi a Nobel Prize, (Hooray Dr. Capecchi! Go Utes!) and which is now the basis of my own thesis work. I owe mice a lot, but...I hate to say it...
Rats are a lot nicer.
They aren't very popular, despite being quite the cute and fuzzy critters if you can ever get them to stand still. My sister told me they seem like mammalian insects, which is a pretty good way of summing it up. They move so fast relative to their size that it's more of a scuttle than a run, and more like a cockroach than like a dog. Also, as another friend found out, they have objectionable parenting habits. Her nieces and nephew found that they had trapped a mouse in a non-lethal cage trap, where it gave birth. So the nieces and nephew wanted to help out the mommy mouse; they kept it in the cage and fed it and so forth, and all went swimmingly for about a week--until they woke up one morning to discover that the mouse had EATEN HER BABIES!
This is pretty common if the mother is stressed or isn't getting enough protein, but you can imagine the effect it had on the poor kids (the human kids; the effect on the mouse pups is pretty obvious).
It pains me to speak ill of animals that have given so much to science, including the technology that just won Dr. Mario Capecchi a Nobel Prize, (Hooray Dr. Capecchi! Go Utes!) and which is now the basis of my own thesis work. I owe mice a lot, but...I hate to say it...
Rats are a lot nicer.
Posted by sealionii on
Friday October 12, 2007 at 12:33am