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Psychotic Lab Mice
meltoast writes "We send lab mice through a maze to see their reactions and then take that information and apply it to our knowledge of the human psyche. Well, what if those mice are completely out of their minds? Discover recently ran an article showing that mice kept in a standard laboratory environment may be crazy. 'In one sequence, a mouse climbs the stainless-steel walls of its cage, hangs from the ceiling by its forelegs while gnawing on the bars, then drops to the floor, only to repeat the process endlessly. On the other side of the cage, a second mouse performs backflips, one per second, for up to 30 minutes at a time.'"
Three points of note:
A) These activities consume up to half of the creatures' waking hours, every single day.
B) The affected animals also exhibit other deficiencies and obsessive behaviors.
C) The entire lifestyle of these creatures is wildly altered by the addition of something as simple as a cardboard tube to their cages.
I hardly think that an hour on a trampoline every now and then is even remotely similar.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
what do you expect them to do -- house the mice in the fucking ritz on their own dime (which ain't much)?
There are ways to ensure that your lab animals have a pleasant environment without spending a lot of money. When I worked in the animal facility at my college, they had many small rooms instead of one large room. I don't know how sensitive to overcrowding mice and rats are, but we usually had no more than 40 rats in any given room (1 large or 2 small per cage excepting for nursing mothers).
Another consideration is the level and quality of stimuli. If the animals are kept in an environment with loud noises or bright lights, they might not respond too kindly. Also- were the animals in the article subject to frequent playful human contact (not of the latex glove variety)? Part of my job was to play with the animals so that they wouldn't become attention deprived.
All I know is that I never observed this "psychotic" behavior in our lab rats and mice, so something had to be working.
My dingo ate your honor student.