The Ultimate Biological Hackers: Why Mice Always Win

We put rovers on Mars. We split the atom. We literally built artificial intelligence. But Sarah, if a one-ounce fuzzball with a pea-sized brain gets into my kitchen? I am completely powerless.

Ha, utterly defeated.

Utterly! It is humiliating. I feel like humanity is just routinely outwitted by the ultimate biological hackers.

Well I mean, they have been practicing on us for a very, very long time. I think most people assume mice moved in when we started farming, right? Like with grain—

Yeah, like grain silos, big barns of wheat.

Right, but that is totally false. Anthropological evidence shows they actually hijacked us about 15,000 years ago during the Natufian period. That is the eastern Mediterranean. Humans built the very first semi-permanent stone houses, before widespread farming even existed, and mice just moved in. They saw a warm box with zero owls and went, free real estate.

Wait, so we didn't even have food stored up yet? We just built a roof and they invited themselves.

Exactly. It is called commensalism. We domesticated dogs to hunt for us, cats domesticated themselves to eat the mice, but mice just showed up uninvited 15 millennia ago and refused to leave.

Okay but how do they even get in? I swear my house is sealed up tight. I checked the weather stripping, I caulked the—

Your house is Swiss cheese to a mouse. Have you ever looked closely at a standard number two pencil?

I mean, sure.

If you have a gap the width of a pencil, or like a ballpoint pen cap, a house mouse can get through it. It is about 6 to 7 millimeters.

Stop. A pen cap? They have bones! How do bones fit through a pen cap?

They literally don't have rigid collarbones. If their tiny skull fits, their shoulders just compress and they slither through like liquid.

That is disgusting.

Oh it gets better. They can jump 13 inches straight up in the air from a standstill.

Wait, vertical?

Vertical. Which, relative to their size, is like you jumping over a two-story building. So your kitchen counter tops are nothing to them.

Okay, but what about the traps? Because I swear I am dealing with super-geniuses. I set a trap, I put the cheese on it, and the next morning the cheese is gone and the trap is just sitting there mocking me. They are disarming it.

They are absolutely not disarming it. Pest control experts say that is a total myth.

But they are Wile E. Coyote-ing me! I know it!

No, they are really not calculating spring velocity. First off, you are using cheese?

Yeah, cheddar. Sometimes Swiss if I'm out.

Cheese is a lie. Cartoons lied to you. They don't even like cheese that much. They want high fat, high protein. Peanut butter, bacon fat, even chocolate. Peanut butter is the gold standard because it mimics the nuts and seeds they naturally look for.

Okay so why are they stealing the bait and not getting caught?

Paranoia. It is called neophobia, fear of new things. If you put a wooden plank in the middle of a floor they have mapped out, they avoid it just because it was not there yesterday. And they map your kitchen with urine, by the way.

Okay, wow. Gross. Wait, they map it with pee?

Oh yeah. They have terrible eyesight, they can't see past six inches. So they dribble pee constantly to leave safe scent trails for themselves and others. A single mouse also drops like 40 to 100 poops a day.

I am going to burn my house down.

Honestly, probably your best bet. Because if you set a trap with your bare hands, it now reeks of human sweat and oils. A mouse approaches, smells your thumb on the wood, and bails.

So I am sabotaging my own traps just by touching them.

Yep. The exterminator trick is called pre-baiting. You put the peanut butter on the trap but you don't arm the spring. You let them eat it for three days until they lose their neophobia. Day four, you set the spring. Boom.

That is devious. I love it. But wait, what if there is more than one? Everyone says if you see one, you have a dozen.

Oh, the math is terrifying. A female mouse hits puberty at like four weeks old. Gestation is only 19 to 21 days.

So they are popping out babies in three weeks?

And she can get pregnant again within 24 hours of giving birth. Up to ten litters a year. Under ideal indoor conditions, a single breeding pair can theoretically result in a population of over 5,000 mice in one year.

Five thousand! From two!

From two. Outside, a hawk or a snake gets them in a year. Inside your walls? They live luxury lives of two to three years. Just chewing on your wires.

Why do they chew wires? Are they eating the plastic?

No, their front teeth, the incisors, never stop growing. Ever. If they don't constantly gnaw on things, their teeth will literally grow back through their own skulls.

Oh my god.

Right? So they have to chew drywall, concrete, electrical wires. It is why they start so many house fires. Oh, and they sing.

Singing? Do not try to make them sound cute now.

No, they actually sing! Male mice sing complex courtship songs in ultrasonic frequencies. Like up to 90 kilohertz. We just can't hear it.

So my walls are basically a 5,000-guest ultrasonic rave that smells like peanut butter and pee, and they are all desperately chewing my electrical grid so their skulls don't get pierced.

That is scientifically accurate, yes.

Well, on that horrifying note, I am going to go buy some rubber gloves and un-armed traps.

Good luck. You are going to need it against a 15,000-year winning streak.

Fair point. Thanks for ruining my kitchen for me, Sarah. Catch you all next time.