• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Remarkable Mice

We had a mouse trap for catching the mouse. The mouse managed to get into the trap, take the bait and then return later and put a nut in it's place instead. All without getting caught.
Your mouse is taking the piss. It's intelligent!
 
I have to admit that vermin and insects bring out my inner-Dalek. Taking them out into the country to breed reinforcements would cost petrol-money!

I note that mainstream shops are encouraging us to poison the buggers - a method which risks putrifying corpses under your floorboards. Olde-Tyme traps are available at the poundies - often three or four for a pound.

Presumably they are assembled by blind children in sweat-shops, so I am extra-cautious in setting the things, wondering if tensioning the spring might be the last thing I see before my own eye receives the full force of the failed mechanism!

I know, a cat would save all this mither, while creating a whole lot more! :cat:
 
Should get them to watch Of Mice And Men.

The eerie opening shot of the slow drive of a bomb-carrying car in Orson Welles’ 1958 Touch of Evil prompts strong reactions in film watchers.

Now reactions in the brains of an unusual audience — mice — offer a major twist in our understanding of how brain cells parse visual scenes.
Scientists used to think that each of the many cells in the brain’s visual system primarily handles a single job, such as responding to a black and white contrast. But a study published December 16 in Nature Neuroscience does away with that simplicity.

Researchers including Saskia de Vries, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, used a powerful microscope to study 59,610 brain cells in the visual systems of live mice, through openings in their skulls. The researchers then watched whether these cells responded to (or ignored) a lineup of visual input, including clips from Touch of Evil and simpler images, such as drifting black stripes and a still picture of a butterfly.

The way that the nerve cells, or neurons, behaved was a surprise. Overall, only about 10 percent of the neurons studied responded as the researchers expected, based on data from earlier studies. “The remaining neurons don’t look like what’s going on in the textbook,” de Vries says.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mice-watching-movies-show-surprising-complexity-vision-cells
 
Beyond the reach of cats?

A South American mouse is the world’s highest-dwelling mammal
By Jack J. Lee 24 HOURS AGO

A yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse has shattered the world record as the highest-dwelling mammal yet documented.

The mouse (Phyllotis xanthopygus rupestris) was found 6,739 meters, or 22,110 feet, above sea level on the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco, a dormant volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina. For comparison, Mount Everest is 8,848 meters high (29,029 feet).

The record was previously held by the large-eared pika (Ochotona macrotis), reported at an altitude of 6,130 meters during a 1921 Mount Everest expedition. Birds have been found at even higher altitudes (SN: 2/13/14).

That mammals can live at these heights is astonishing, considering there’s only about 44 percent of the oxygen available at sea level. “It’s very difficult to sustain any kind of physical activity, or mental activity for that matter,” says Jay Storz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The temperature is also rarely above freezing and can drop as low as –60° Celsius.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/south-american-mouse-world-highest-dwelling-mammal
 
Macho mice are sensitive.

When two male mice meet in a confined space, the rules of engagement are clear: The lower ranking mouse must yield.

But when these norms go out the window—say, when researchers rig such an encounter to favor the weakling—it sends the higher ranking male into a depressionlike spiral. That’s the conclusion of a new neuroimaging study that reveals how the mouse brain responds to an unexpected loss of social status, which has been shown to be a major risk factor for depression in humans, particularly men.

The new study’s approach is “clever and powerful,” says Neir Eshel, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Stanford University who wasn’t involved in the work. But he cautions more work is needed to extend the results to our own species.

Groups of mice live in hierarchies, both in the lab and the wild. In the lab, though, the highest ranking males form particularly despotic regimes. One or more dominant “alpha mice” will have privileged access to food and females. They can pee wherever they please, rather than in the designated corner reserved for commoners. ...

https://www.science.org/content/art...are-trounced-weaklings-they-spiral-depression
 
@maximus otter you're going to need a smaller calibre rifle.

Oh deer! Chinese researchers genetically engineered mice to grow tiny deer antlers.

They implanted stem cells from deer into the rodents who then grew the appendages. According to the scientists from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, the technique could lead to new treatments for bone injuries or, possibly, regrowing lost limbs. From Field & Stream:

The researchers behind the more recent study say that their work extends the catalog of mammalian stem cell systems that are known to science. With these newly-identified stem cell types, they're hoping to expand the capacity of modern medicine. "Our results suggest that deer have an application in clinical bone repair," the authors wrote in the study's conclusion. "Beyond that, the induction of human cells into [anlter-like] cells could be used in regenerative medicine for skeletal injuries or limb regeneration."

https://boingboing.net/2023/03/20/mice-genetically-engineered-to-grow-tiny-deer-antlers.html
 
Its amazing that this sort of research wasnt done yonks ago.

I recall telling a GP friend about deer; she was unaware that antlers were shed and regrown.

Immediately she asked if any research was done into using this attribute as research for complex organ regeneration.

And I told her yes!
 
Would you allow your pet mice to get drunk?

The only cure to being drunk is to wait it out. But that might not always be the case: Injecting drunk mice with a naturally occurring hormone helped them sober up more quickly than they otherwise would have, a new study shows.

Mice that received a shot of FGF21 — a hormone made by the liver — woke up from a drunken stupor roughly twice as fast as those that didn’t, researchers report in the March 7 Cell Metabolism.

The find could one day be used to help treat alcohol poisoning, a sometimes-deadly side effect of heavy drinking that lands millions of people in the emergency room every year, says molecular endocrinologist David Mangelsdorf.

The sobering effect of FGF21 isn’t the first time the hormone has been linked to drinking. Scientists have previously shown that livers ramp up production of this hormone when alcohol floods the bloodstream. And while FGF21 doesn’t help break down alcohol, researchers have found that the hormone can help protect livers from the toxic effects of liquor while dampening the desire to continue drinking in mice and monkeys. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hormone-shot-drunk-mice-sober-quickly
 
More marvelous mountain mice.

An Andean leaf-eared mouse, <em>Phyllotis vaccarum</em>, perched on a human hand
Andean leaf-eared mice, Phyllotis vaccarum, surprised researchers by living above 6000 meters. Marcial Quiroga-CarmonaJAY STORZ:

Few places are as inhospitable as the top of Llullaillaco, a 6700-meter volcano on the border between Chile and Argentina. Winds howl nonstop and no plants live there; daytime temperatures never get above freezing and plummet even more come nightfall.

Oxygen levels are just 40% of those at sea level, too low for mammals to live there —or so biologists thought until 3 years ago when a research team captured a live leaf-eared mouse at its summit. Now new work shows this animal was not a fluke. The team has found other leaf-eared mice on additional volcano tops, and genomic studies of these summit dwellers and their lower elevation relatives confirm the rodents make their homes nearly 7000 meters above sea level, making them the highest dwelling vertebrate found so far. (Some birds soar higher but appear not to dwell at those elevations.) The team has also come across five other mouse species living above 5000 meters on various mountains in the Central Andes.

The genomic results and other evidence reported today in Current Biology “lay to rest any doubt that mammals live at these really extreme altitudes,” says Grant Mcclelland, a comparative physiologist at McMaster University who was not involved with the work. “It expands our understanding of the environmental limits of animals, especially mammals.”

The cold temperatures and low oxygen associated with high altitudes have long been thought to set a limit on the heights where cold-blooded and even warm-blooded animals can permanently live. “Mammals in general are not very good at dealing with low oxygen environments,” says Catherine Ivy, a comparative physiologist at the University of Western Ontario. They require oxygen to convert food into energy and the colder the environment, the more energy they need. So, whereas a 1000-kilogram hairy yak can thrive at 5000 meters, small animals living at those heights shed heat faster and were expected to have trouble generating enough energy to keep warm, says Sahas Barve, an evolutionary ecologist at Archbold Biological Station. (The previous elevation record holder for mammals was pikas, a rabbit relative, found nearly 6200 meters up on Mount Everest a century ago).

https://www.science.org/content/art...ers-higher-any-mammals-were-thought-able-live
 
Mice even higher up!

Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said.

The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, professor of University of Yamanashi's Advanced Biotechnology Centre, and a team from the Japan Aerospace Space Agency (JAXA), sent frozen mouse embryos on board a rocket to the ISS in August 2021.

Astronauts thawed the early-stage embryos using a special device designed for this purpose and grew them on the station for four days.

"The embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed" normally into blastocysts, cells that develop into the fetus and placenta, the scientists said.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-mouse-embryos-grown-space-japan.html
 
"I can see myself!" squeak mice in laboratory study.
Actually, no they don't, but they do seem to realize they're looking at themselves in a mirror:
Mice pass the mirror test
Researchers report that mice display behavior that resembles self-recognition when they see themselves in the mirror. When the researchers marked the foreheads of black-furred mice with a spot of white ink, the mice spent more time grooming their heads in front of the mirror -- presumably to try and wash away the ink spot.
 
Fully sentient mice? Uh-oh.
 
Fully sentient mice? Uh-oh.

Get a mousekeeper to do your cleaning.

Despite being an avid wildlife photographer, retired postman Rodney Holbrook never expected to capture a Ratatouille-style scene unfolding in his own shed.

After regularly discovering that things from the night before had been mysteriously tidied, he set up a night camera on his workbench. It captured a mouse picking up clothes pegs, corks, nuts and bolts. He has since nicknamed the well-kept rodent Welsh Tidy Mouse.

The 75-year-old from Builth Wells, Powys, said the tidying ritual had been going on for two months.

"At first I noticed that some food that I was putting out for the birds was ending up in some old shoes I was storing in the shed," he said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-67902966
 
Last edited:
Get a mousekeeper to do your cleaning.
Linked on that page is another similar story from 2019.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-47625283

A man who thought he had a poltergeist was amazed to discover a mouse had been "stockpiling" items in his shed.
When screws and metal objects kept reappearing in a box containing bird feed, Steve Mckears thought he "was going mad".
The 72-year-old from Severn Beach, near Bristol said he found a screw in a tub of crushed peanuts in February.
After the mystery continued for several weeks he set up a camera which revealed the rodent responsible.
Mr Mckears said when he and a neighbour, who helped set up the night vision camera, watched footage from overnight in the locked shed, he was relieved it was a mouse "and not a poltergeist".
"We were amazed at what he was doing, we just couldn't believe it," he said.
mouse.png


I can only imagine this is some sort of nesting behaviour. Not very comfortable, though.
 
Back
Top