Keep your mice warm

A report in Science Daily says that a staggering 9 out of 10 drugs "successfully tested in mice and other animal models ultimately fail to work in people." Why does all this expensive research and testing prove a failure? Because the mice are cold.

Who outside of a research lab would know that the most commonly used test subjects are kept in a cold environment? It turns out that cooler temps help prevent aggression.  A Stanford researcher proposed the idea that the attempt to keep warm distorts the mice' metabolism, making their reactions to drugs less like ours than they would otherwise be.

The solution? Give the mice nesting material so that they can build a warm place and live like actual mice. The research involved different room temperatures, cages, and nesting materials in order to determine exactly what the mice like best. Read the short article here and find out what the researchers have to say about mice on vacation.

Bulk mice

I ordered 40 jumbo mice for Matilda, vacuum packed and delivered overnight in dry ice. They come in styrofoam trays of 20, neatly lined up in rows like a tray of sausages but pearly white instead of those unappetizing sausage colors.

Last week I had only one adult mouse left, so I knew she'd be hungry. I thawed out a jumbo and brought it to her. As soon as I dangled it into her tank, she struck, grabbing it at the side and in the same movement, coiling her body around it. I've seen her do one coil before but this time she was wrapped all around it as she maneuvered her mouth up to its head.

A snake strikes faster than our eyes follow, so it's a beautiful and dramatic thing to see--as long as it's not a venomous snake striking at Moi.

Matilda's dinner

I went to the pet store today to get a couple of mice for Matilda the corn snake and meal worms for Chilibelina the leopard gecko, who is here for the summer. As before, the meal worms came in a plastic tub with a lid and the mice came in a box with pictures of mice, budgies and hamsters on the sides. I got home and opened the mouse box to find four teeny red eyes looking at me and two quivering pink noses and white whiskers being raised inquiringly. One of the mice wore a little brown mouse poop on his head—you would be amazed at how much poop two mice produce in twenty minutes.

Instead of saying “frozen adult mice,” I must have said, “adult mice” at the store. Frozen is generally the default state for feeder mice, so I didn’t even consider that I’d find live mice in the box. Matilda has never encountered a live adult mouse. Most likely, the several generations of captive-bred corn snakes from which she’s descended haven’t, either.

Reflecting that the cost of gas was making these very expensive mice, I drove back to the store to exchange Chuck and Lola for two frozen mice. Frozen mice don’t have names and can’t bite back.