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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

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Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#151

Post by shard »

verisimi wrote: post #139
shard wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they had put some thought into which methods cause the least suffering. It doesn't sound like they were trying to skirt the edge of what the ethics committee would allow, which is how I read your comment. Please let me know if I have misinterpreted. As to possible alternative methods, those include freezing, which could be quite prolonged and painful, and blunt force trauma, which could be difficult/am…

Your assumption is that the mice must die. Given that its the case, you then wonder about the most effective means of killing them. But, pushing back on your assumption, what value can there possibly be in killing baby mice?

Do you mean in general? There are two reasons given in this thread: medical research and pet (snake) food.

I expect I don't need to explain why it's best to kill the mice humanely for medical research which involve dissection of some sort.

For snake food, it's best to feed mice that have been euthanized. Feeding live mice is cruel to the mice, who experience terror right before death, and there is also the possibility that a struggling mice could injure the snake.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#152

Post by taylodl »

shard wrote: post #131
verisimi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they use scissors and cut off the baby mice's heads. It's to be done swiftly so it's like a guillotine. Yes, that sounds fine. Much more humane. Carry on. As long as the ethics committee OKs it.

It sounds like they had put some thought into which methods cause the least suffering. It doesn't sound like they were trying to skirt the edge of what the ethics committee would allow, which is how I read your comment. Please let me know if I have misinterpreted. As to possible alternative methods, those include freezing, which could be quite prolonged and painful, and blunt force trauma, which could be difficult/am…

Absolutely - this is a world-renowned medical research school and since they always have interns you can expect this question has been asked many, many times. They feel the need to explain it in their orientation because they know some of the students are going to be shocked by the procedure.

My daughter did say it's done so fast and the mice are so accustomed to being handled there doesn't appear to be any fear on the mouse's part and there doesn't appear to be any suffering, let alone needless suffering.

Funny anecdote - the first time she was in the lab when they were doing this she hadn't had breakfast that day and had a light dinner the night before and she fainted from low blood sugar. Took her a couple of days to convince them no, she was fine, she just let her blood sugar get too low.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#153

Post by Hammershaft »

onion2k wrote: post #2

The global population of Earth has pretty much doubled since July 1968 when the experiment was run. Evidently the fears of overpopulation they had were unfounded.

Hard to agree with this when faced with the overwhelming environmental degradation we see globally.

Between extinctions 1000x the normal background rate, microplastics & chemicals poisining food supplies, climate change, oceanic accumulations of garbage twice the size of france and growing exponentially, growing water shortages, topsoil erosion, etc etc etc... it is not clear that those fears are unfounded.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#156

Post by hanoz »

h2odragon wrote: post #121
hanoz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hot water? I would have thought cold or preferably lukewarm water would be more humane.

Fast and doesn't damage the mouse as snake food. If the water is hot enough the shock kills them very quickly.

Hmmm, well, lukewarm for me anyway please.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#157

Post by tharne »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #100
h2odragon wrote: post #49

One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast as possible. Dunk and done. One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I had been busy…

Once in grad school I went to a talk where another grad student was presenting on his fear research with mice. Many powerpoint details unfold of the hell he and his advisor had contrived to make the mice chronically afraid, and to be able to quantify the fear induced and its effects. I learned that when mice get scared enough they shit excessively. In the presentation of results he lingers on a graph, and says, for e…

> That silence is still among the top few of my regrets.

Don't be too hard on yourself. The fact that you remember the incident and feel that regret shows a lot of emotional maturity and self awareness. I doubt many others that attended the talk that day even remember it.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#158

Post by tharne »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #132
pessimizer wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to adopt her and her baby after seeing that. They were never exceptional as pet mice but I still feel good about saving those two. Weird sentiment. It's like when South American paramilitaries would exterminate entire villages, but adopt one of the children. Does that make it easier to go back to killing them, or harder? edit: I could see it both ways; harder obviously, because you enjoy your pet and you see…

Alternate take: sometimes you perform whatever small act of grace that you can manage in this world, even if it's futile or inconsistent with your other actions.

Very well said

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#159

Post by GuB-42 »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #100
h2odragon wrote: post #49

One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast as possible. Dunk and done. One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I had been busy…

Once in grad school I went to a talk where another grad student was presenting on his fear research with mice. Many powerpoint details unfold of the hell he and his advisor had contrived to make the mice chronically afraid, and to be able to quantify the fear induced and its effects. I learned that when mice get scared enough they shit excessively. In the presentation of results he lingers on a graph, and says, for e…

It is not uncommon for people whose work involve a lot of death and suffering to indulge in dark humor. It is not that they don't care, quite the opposite in fact.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#160

Post by xenadu02 »

dalbasal wrote: post #45

One of those topics where the meta is richer than the actual science. I remember my Dad mentioning as a child. The public interest is interesting in itself. Not the the science isn't interesting. Population/behavioural studies like this are quite interesting. Animal behaviour is interesting, especially group behaviours where dynamics can play out. That said, what was he actually trying to learn? If you take the same…

We don't really know because Dr Calhoun didn't keep research notes or samples, published few scientific papers on his research, never captured or shared significant statistical data, had few controls and little regard for cofounds, and almost entirely failed to tell anyone anything about his other "universes".

It also doesn't help that the two peer-reviewed studies that tried to replicate his results failed to do so. In many of those experiments the populations reached stable sizes, some without first experiencing a crash and others only after doing so. Some of the loosely-described "aberrant" behavior Calhoun claimed was never observed... not that we can be sure of that because Calhoun never gave us scientifically relevant observations of that behavior, only colloquial descriptions.

It seems clear now Calhoun set out to achieve a specific result and worked hard to achieve it. Then people with an ideological axe to grind on all sides fill in the blanks to claim it proves their position.

Calhoun for his part went to his grave claiming that mice/rat over-population experiments performed with inbred lab mice strains were in actual fact great models of human behavior and bemoaned that people didn't take his ideas seriously enough by rearchitect society to fit his conclusions.

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