365 Urban Species. #067: House Mouse

[urbpan]

photos by cottonmanifesto

Urban species #067: House mouse Mus musculus

The house mouse may have had a longer continuous association with humans than any other mammal. The origins of this rodent are shrouded in history, but it is thought to have been native to central Asia. Humans spread into mouse territory thousands of years ago, and the mice have come along as humans spread elsewhere, for the rest of prehistory and into history. It seems likely that the mouse will be the first mammal inadvertently introduced to other planets, should humans continue to expand in that direction.

Cat lovers have cause to thank the house mouse for following humans on trade routes and migrations. The appearance of the house mouse in the stores of grain in Egypt led to the domestication of the house cat. A cat is still the best way to keep mice out of a house, though they aren't perfect. The pursuit of technological improvement is summed up as the search for "a better mousetrap." One modern version of the mousetrap is the "hav-a-hart," which captures the mouse alive, to be released elsewhere. Unfortunately, the natural habitat of the house mouse is indoors, so a mouse "set free" will either find its way back into a house or be preyed upon.

The house mouse is found, like the Indian meal moth and sawtooth grain beetle, anywhere in the world there is grain in storage. But they aren't limited to infesting the human food supply. Nearly any kind of building, structure, or shelter is an invitation to the house mice. If food is provided--and house mice define food much more broadly than we do--the lure of man-made structures becomes irresistable. Nearly everyone has a story about finding mice in an unexpected location. They nest in car heating vents, cupboards and basements, and even, as the picture below shows, under the tracks of the subway.

Mus musculus has transformed itself from a scavenger and a pest, into one of the most significant and valuable species alive. Due to its rapid rate of reproduction, ease of care, and similarity (from a medical point of view) to humans, the house mouse has been domesticated into the lab mouse. Mice are the most useful animal for medical experiments, and breeding them has become a mutli-million dollar specialty industry. Whether we approve of this use of mice or not, we all have benefitted from the research, and have mice to thank for countless treatments and medicines.

Mice are also bred for the pet trade, as pets themselves, or as food for reptiles. Mice make charming, surprisingly intelligent, and sociable pets, their main drawback being a short life span, and a propensity to escape and contribute to the wild mouse population. Captive mice come in a variety of colors, from familiar white to black, as well as tan or pale gray partial albinos, natural grayish brown, and fancy spotted varieties. There are even "nude" mice, bred to have no fur at all.

Other species of mice can be urban, as well. In the Boston area, the white-footed mouse Peromyscus leucopus comes into houses and other buildings when the weather gets cold or abundant food is supplied. There are different species of mice present all over the world, but house mice outcompete them in the household and urban niches.




The mouse is in the upper right-hand corner of this photograph. The mouse had a series of burrows along the tracks and under some of the railroad ties. These are the Red Line tracks at Park Street Station.

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

I think this is the best one so far.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Definitely wins "most urban." (the goose and pigeon entries place second and third)

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

I meant your writing not the subject! :)

[iheartoothecae.livejournal.com]

*thumbs up*

Also, Mus musculus is just about the most fun thing to say ever.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Especially if you pronounce it with a long U sound: Moose Mooscooloose!

[iheartoothecae.livejournal.com]

I pity the fool who says it otherwise.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of 'llama glama' myself. :)

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

My vote is for Plutella xylostella, the diamondback moth.

(Closely followed by Diabrotica undecempunctata and Polyphagotarsonemus latus, the spotted cucumber beetle and broad mite, respectively)

[ankhanu.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with some of the above comments; this was an awesome post. It's well written and has a good dose of content as well.

I've had mice as pets in the past. They're a rather nice little pet, and their short life spans aren't an issue if you don't grow TOO emotionally attached to them. It's interesting to watch them interacting with one another and problem solving within their environments, and they can be fairly personable.

The picture is fantastic as well. Good eye, Cottonmanifesto, in spotting the mouse and snapping it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I like mice a lot, have written about them before, and work with them, so I just wrote what was on the top of my head what I thought was interesting, in no particular order. I actually worried that it was underedited.

The range of emotional attachment people have to pets is amazing. I can't get too attached to mice because we use them as livestock at work, and guess who is the designated mouse-killer?

I have had pet rats and they are so heartbreaking--they can be as smart and interactive as dogs, but in a little over two years, they're gone.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks! Fortunately for me, taking a picture of a mouse in that particular place is like shooting fish in a bucket. I've been watching them there since 1986!

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

Now we're talking! Bring on them rodents!

While we're on the subject, any idea what keeps the american desert from being over run with feral hamsters? Just curious. Don't worry, Sammy is still safe in his cage.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Compared to house mice, hamsters are slow-breeding and anti-social. You could try buying a few and setting them free, but probably your coyotes, rattlesnakes, house cats, and ravens would make short work of them.

I don't know enough about how similar the American desert and the Syrian desert are.

[anais2.livejournal.com]

How about gerbils? 52 of the buggers chewed through our Habitrail complex, and vanished...We sold the house with 15 still unaccounted for. (Gladly, to an attorney)

I've often wondered if he has a contract out on me...

[dragonwrites.livejournal.com]

yeah! i loved this post! maybe you could do rats (norwegian) sometime. they get the worst rap, and to be fair, most rats that you meet aren't carrying the plague.

Blue Ribbon

[http://users.livejournal.com/-xaipe-/]

You are (by far) my favorite poster. Thank you to both of you!

Re: Blue Ribbon

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for saying so!
You're welcome.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I suppose you are expecting this comment from me...

I'm curious why you said "Whether we approve of this use of mice or not, we all have benefitted from the research, and have mice to thank for countless treatments and medicines." While I don't disagree that mice have been used in medical research, I think that you'll find that the benefits of using mice are hotly contested. Because mice are poor models for the human body, the results of drug testing on mice has been seriously hit or miss, and has directly caused many, many humans to die. So even if humans are the only kind of earthlings you care about, using mice as human models in science experiments has definitely not a been a success on the whole.

To me, using non-humans in general for human models is a lot like using a hammer to fix your computer... Occasionally, it might work, but far more often you end up with a pile of shattered plastic and metal.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Of course I was! :)

In fact, the reason that I used that sentence was that I knew there were people that read this that feel as you do. While it may be hotly contested, it's largely an ideological debate, not a scientific one. I won't begin to list the specifics of medical progress using mice (although Alexis might jump in and do that) but I would challenge the idea that it has not been a success on the whole. Scientists discard theories and methods that don't work, and the continued use of mice suggests that something is working.

I'm not a huge fan of animal experimentation, but I don't think it's in and of itself any more wrong than keeping animals for other purposes. At least there are strict standards for animal care in laboratories, as opposed to (for example) farms.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Ah, but my point was that even from a "scientific" (human-centric) viewpoint using mice as models is controversial and has lead to many, many wrong conclusions. Just one famous example is the drug Fen-phen, which was not dangerous in mice, but was in humans (causing damage to the human heart). And of course, there is the famous Thalidomide case, where thousands of children were born with malformed arms and legs. So, this argument against non-human animal models isn't just about ideologies or even other species, it's about also human health.

Consider that in a ten year study the FDA "found that out of 198 new medications, 102 (52 percent) were either recalled or relabeled secondary to side effects not predicted in animal tests." (from NAVS.org (http://www.navs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ain_sci_medicalresearch))

I do agree that many scientists think that non-human models are useful, but as I pointed out before, you could also say that hammers are useful tools for computer repair, since they sometimes can work to fix a problem. I would say that the reason that scientists continue to use non-human models could very easily have more to do with politics and lack of creativity than anything else. I don't think, for the most part, that these scientists are malicious in their intent to continue to use questionable or unreliable models. I think they honestly believe that they are doing a good thing (for humans at least).

Perhaps a more accurate thing you could say, which wouldn't be debatable, would be something like: "Whether we approve of this use of mice or not, scientists have used them for research for a long time and many believe that doing so has led to countless treatments and medicines for humans."

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Shockingly, the lab in which I work has been instrumental in the development (yes, with the help of mice) of a drug to combat leukemia which is currently in clinical trials to see how it does on intestinal tumors where the preliminary results are very promising.

has directly caused many, many humans to die

Could you please cite references? If you're talking about cancer/other terminally ill individuals who're participating in clinical trials I think that you're putting an interesting (and not wholly accurate) spin on that information.

100% of current cancer therapies (ones used in medical institutions anyway) have been tested on mice. 100%.

Perhaps this article would be enlightening. Also, I found this article to be interesting and it presents both sides of the argument (citing Vioxx as a failure of the mouse model system but, honestly, that seems to me to be more of an issue of rushed clinical trials).

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

I think one of the main problems with animal research is that the conditions of the animals are highly variable. You lab is run by people with a desire to give animals good care. I share a lab with people that, pardon the pun, don't give a rat's ass about the animals. I have written about the shit they do in my journal. I turn them into the IACUC all the time but nothing changes. Money is the reason. Why piss off a researcher bringing in lots of money because of how he treats some damn mouse? I can't argue that animals shouldn't be used in research if they are wasted all the time to make hamburgers, but dammit, there should be PASSION for animal welfare and I don't see it.

Also, my relative is a biochemist for a drug company and she uses mice in her research. She thinks it's wasteful and shoddy science because the systems are so different, but the government requires animal testing. That is why 100% of new drugs have been tested on animals. Onions are toxic to dogs and cats. Raisins are toxic to dogs. To have to test drugs on animals means good medications have been nixed because an animal did show injury to something a human might have been fine with.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Your IACUC people suck. Ours are like rabid.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Money is the reason. Why piss off a researcher bringing in lots of money because of how he treats some damn mouse?

I just realized that this probably doesn't apply in our well-funded cutthroat environment.

Boston area mice (white-footed, esp)

[(Anonymous)]

I hand (or should I say bra-) raise a white-footed (or deermouse, one cannot tell but from a salive sample) last year. I would love to breed her(I know she would love kids, because she stole the infant offspring of her store-bought cagemate to cozy up with). Problem is, no one seems to have a captive male deermouse. If you have one, let me know.
linkybum@yahoo.com
Stace
Thanks