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]

Your IACUC people suck. Ours are like rabid.

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

Do you have scheduled inspections or 6 months notice when they show up? Spontaneous inspections would be the single biggest improvement in animal research in this country.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Our animal facility is a lockdown type. You have to go in through a special door. You have to suit up like whoa before you actually get into areas where actual animals are. You have to go through rigorous training before you can have access to the facility (unless someone sneaks you in, of course, but there's video surveillance). Mice aren't allowed to leave the facility (on 2 dedicated floors of the building we're in) unless they're dead. Vet techs and facility workers are constantly monitoring activities in the facility. Vet techs inspect each cage of mice on a daily basis and send emails to investigators of mice are sick, seem uncomfortable, cages are overcrowded, or individuals are dead. They check teeth on a weekly basis and charge us $300/mouse for tooth trimming should it be required. We just got an email this morning about how toe clipping for ID will not longer be allowed after the mice are a week old (it used to be 12 weeks).

So, um, to actually answer your question - there are spies.

And, ah ha, an excuse to use my potentially offensive animal research icon. :)

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

Ah see, now there's a better set up. The animals at my facility spend the night usually on an animal "care" floor. During the day they are carted down to labs where the honor system comes in on following protocols. Want to keep the animals in the fume hood overnight instead of sending them back up where a vet might see them? No problem. Want to put 10 mice in a little cage so they can tear the shit out of each other? Well, who is going to see? Got a sick mouse? Threaten the vet that you'll just kill it so you don't have to worry about it. Running out of room? Think of new and exciting ways to kill your mice. Etc... That is the system I see. My spying does no good.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Whoa, dude, how does your place get accredited?! There are some cons with the lockdown system (it gets annoying for everyone to do procedures down there as there's only 2 hoods, the staff won't do things like give acidified water when needed - PIs have to do that, blahblahblah), but the pros far outweigh them. What amazes me is that even though there's a 6 week quarantine for each animal imported from another facility, there are still MPV breakouts periodically.

We just went through the accreditation rigamarole last week and, I guess, from now on, you have to use a new sac board for each mouse. I'm not sure how enforced that'll be since it's clearly absurd.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should write an anonymous letter to the feds?

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

I hadn't considered that option. I really have tried to "work with the system" on this. They do much worse stuff than what I mentioned above. Peta has made noise about them for stuff they do to primates. Honestly, I think the feds know. If they wanted to do anything, they would have gotten involved in the primate stuff.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

If everything's unsupervised and people are unethical, it doesn't surprise me at all.

I'd write a letter if I were you - it's worth a try.

[turil.livejournal.com]

"And, ah ha, an excuse to use my potentially offensive animal research icon. :)"

At first I thought it was a pit bull (little tiny legs, kinda black and white), but now I'm guessing it's a rat or mouse?

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

It's a mouse, mid-dissection, with an extremely enlarged spleen.