Just curious.

[Sheri]

Let's say you were keeping some mice for the first time... 1 male, 2 females.

Let's say the male died.

Then let's say that the female(s) devoured his head, face, and brain.

This is normal mouse behaviour, yes?

 

[meier link]

depends on ur definition of normal..but yeah it happens, ive had it happen a couple times with my feeders..sex of the mouse doesnt really matter.
if u keep em very well fed and watered it shouldnt happen to often

 

[Crotalus]

Sometimes it happens, usually its the females gang up on the male and kill it. I never had the females cannibalise on him though. I would kill the females and get new strain of mice from somewhere else. Best strain are from a laboratory that are raised for lab purposes, the pet store mice (in my experience) can be very aggressive

/Lelle

 

[Darwinsdad]

Did they want to understand how the male of the species thinks. Something along the lines of..." fricking women, always bitting my head of for something#$%&^%^&#^%. Want you to breed, mow the substrat and so on."
mission acomplished.

 

[Malkavian]

Maybe not normal, but I've seen it happen before (Very creepy to have a half dozen white mice look up at you with red stained muzzles) while working at a petstore. Rats were notorious for it, but it happened with the mice as well

 

[Sheri]

Creepy indeed.

I thought, last week, that I might start to like them and think of them as pets when I changed their cage for the first time.

Now I am scared to go in the basement!

It reminded me of a strange hamster incident in my teens...

I will remove the corpse today. In broad daylight.

Sigh. Guess I need to order another male.

Where would I get lab mice? I mean, yes, obviously a labratory... but do I just call a random one up? Do I have to infiltrate it somehow? Make a friend on the inside?

 

[Malkavian]

Infiltrate, definitely

If there's a university nearby you could possibly get some from the biology department

 

[Sheri]

Ok. I will begin preparations today for the stealthy mouse coup I am planning.

Well, maybe not... I do have a friend that is relatively in touch with the bio department still. I'll let you know if there is any Mission Impossible style work and take some pics.

 

[Crotalus]

Creepy indeed.

I thought, last week, that I might start to like them and think of them as pets when I changed their cage for the first time.

Now I am scared to go in the basement!

It reminded me of a strange hamster incident in my teens...

I will remove the corpse today. In broad daylight.

Sigh. Guess I need to order another male.

Where would I get lab mice? I mean, yes, obviously a labratory... but do I just call a random one up? Do I have to infiltrate it somehow? Make a friend on the inside?

Hehehe I see rotating hamsterheads... vomiting green stuff while they praise The Master LOL

Check the phonebook for laboratory equipment, maybe theres a facility around W-peg that breed mice - if so call and ask nicely for 1.4 or something.

/Lelle

 

[Sheri]

Hehehe I see rotating hamsterheads... vomiting green stuff while they praise The Master LOL

Check the phonebook for laboratory equipment, maybe theres a facility around W-peg that breed mice - if so call and ask nicely for 1.4 or something.

/Lelle

With my luck I'll get the ones that were subjected to bubonic plague experiments.

 

[Lars Butcher]

I have to breed rats to keep my snake collection fed, and I had it happen a few times with them. Actually, come to think of it, its happened in my mice cages as well.

I was sort of creeped out about the whole ordeal, so I took it to a friend of mine who deals with small animals and is very knowledgeable. What I got out of it is, females become aggressive if they become pregnant, and the male still trys to breed. Usually, that female kills the male and once he's dead, everyone joins in on the brains simply because they taste good?

So if theres any truth to that, you probably have a gravid (yeah, I know. To much time in the invert world) female mouse...who is very protective of her upcoming young.

~Lars

 

[Randolph XX()]

that's the worst mammal behavior i've ever heard...
but i know Brain is magicaly tasty to other animals, probably smells good
i poped the skull of a skink to feed a WC mandarin snake(i've tried everything, he just ate skinks) he grabbed it after 3 months of fasting.

 

[Wolfchan]

The explanation I was told for this behavior is that in the wild having dead animals around would attract predators so the mice eat their dead to insure that this doesn't happen. Don't know how valid that is, but it's what I heard.

Also, when I was breeding rodents, I found it very helpful to give them some meat products during the gestation. It cut back on cannibalism among the mice, at least, though the only thing that seemed to make a difference in the rats was feeding them mealworms. :wall:

 

[Haplopelmatic]

that's the worst mammal behavior i've ever heard...
QUOTE]

I don't know... I think Holocaust and serial killers are pretty up-there as well.

*Sheri* I recently had a pregnant mouse kill and eat off all of her newborn pinkie's heads. That was pretty freaky, but I don't know if it's natural behavior or not.