For my biology class I have to pick and design and complete an experiment. I chose to do mine on mice because I thought it would be easy to use small animals.
So I bought one male and one female mouse (turned out to be both male but anyway...). Then about a month later my teacher says that we need at least 10 of what we are experimenting on.
So I go to the pet store and buy six male and six female white mice. We bring them home and put a drop of finger nail polish on the tips of the tails of each mouse to show whether they are male or female. We put them in the tank that had our previous mice in and that's that. Within minutes one of the old mice starts "attacking" one of the new mice. It turns out that it was trying to mate with it, but we didn't know that.
But we are unable to seperate the two groups because we don't have any more cages. So a couple of days later I look into the cage and see that all of the mice are eating one of the younger mice!
What could have caused this?
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
You cannot EVER put unrelated male mice together. You can't even put brother/brother or father/son back together if they've been seperated for more than a day, tops. If they grow up together, they're usually OK, but the mice you bought likely did not. ****Occasionally**** if there is no competition for food, territory, or a mate, males can be OK together. But, I'm guessing as soon as you introduced females and crowded the cage, all H311 broke out and somebody got killed.
The mouse you found dead was murdered over a territory, food, or mate dispute. Mice, being clean animals and opportunists, wanted to keep their cage clean and take advantage of the food source they had nearby, so they ate the dead mouse.
I'm not going to lecture you, but please in the future do your research before you get any animal. They're not "things", they are alive, and they need care.
And by the way, you can touch baby mice, I used to breed and did it hundreds of times and never had a litter eaten. The scent thing is a myth. If you clean the cage and pup babies in with mom, then pup mom and babies back in the clean cage, no problems will happen. If you leave the male in there, SOMETIMES he will eat the young since males are more territorial. He will usually do it after a cage cleaning since the territory won't smell right, so that's where this story comes from. If it's just females and babies and you keep them together, they'll be fine. Often, and I have seen this happen with my own eyes, females will co-mother the litter. When the mother goes to eat, other females will tend the litter while she's gone.
The mouse could have died and Mice are very neat so they could have eaten it to make the cage cleaner. Once this happened with one of my mice. Also a suggestion, unless this experiment has to do with the mating of mice I advise you probably separate the male and female mice. It also isn't so healthy to keep so many mice in one cage you should think about getting some more cages.
Mice will sometimes eat the smallest mouse in the cage. Expecially since it sounds like you don't have anything in the "tank" to keep them happy.
did you touch the young mouse when it was born? when a mouse is born you CAN'T touch it, you must leave it alone. if you do touch the mouse your scent will rub onto the mouse and the mother will sense the scent and will attack or possibly eat the mouse. the mother thinks that the young mouse that has your scent is you and is trying to protect everyone else. this is confusing, but it's the truth. i have had that happen to me before. i have asked the pet store employee about it.
what you did sounds cruel. there are too many mice together. they should have been introduced slowly.
rodents are territorial and have a picking order the weak one likely will suffer.