Dieting takes a new turn in this study: “Chronic carbon monoxide treatment attenuates development of obesity and remodels adipocytes in mice fed a high fat diet,” P A Hosick, A A AlAmodi, M V Storm, M U Gousset, B E Pruett, W Gray III, J Stout and D E Stec [pictured here], International Journal of […]
Tag: Mice
Caring for and killing small mammals (University of Florida advice)
The grand circle of life is on display at the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital. The institution reports that it “… offers the highest quality diagnostic and treatment care for all non-domestic animals, including Florida indigenous wildlife and non-native exotic animals.“ “Our service has exceptional experience and unparalleled facilities for non-domestic mammal medicine. We […]
Grimaces of mice and men (and rats)
Scientists are interested in whether mice’s facial expressions can be used as an index of pain. To test the idea, they compared the Mouse Grimace Scale (pictured below) with more traditional behavioral measures in examining mice’s levels of discomfort after having surgery on their manhood—er, mousehood. “The Assessment of Post-Vasectomy Pain in Mice Using Behaviour and […]
Headline of the day: Yogurt and ball circumference
Today’s Headline of the Day is from Scientific American, atop an article by Elie Dolgin: Mice That Eat Yogurt Have Larger Testicles The article itself begins: Last summer a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set out to better understand the effects of yogurt on obesity. They were following up on the results […]
Cats, Left-pawed Mice, stress chemicals
Investigator Richard Wassersug alerts us to this study, saying “This paper looks quite technical, but it is also rather cute. Who would have thought that stress responses in the brain, as measured by immunological defenses were so lateralized?” “Predator exposure-induced cerebral interleukins are modulated heterogeneously by behavioral asymmetry“, Yun Su, Zefeng Xie, Gang Xin, Lichun […]
Curses! Rats! Ordered the wrong mice!
The Retraction Watch blog reports: The authors of a 2006 Journal of Immunology study have retracted it after it dawned on them that they used the wrong mice….
Mouse Allergens and the Presence of a Cat
Nature’s game of cat and mouse continues, with a newly discovered twist: “Housing and Allergens: A Pooled Analysis of Nine U.S. Studies,” Jonathan Wilson, Sherry L. Dixon, Patrick Breyss David Jacobs, Gary Adamkiewicz, Ginger L. Chew, Dorr Dearborn, James Krieger, Megan Sandel, and Adam Spanie, Environmental Research, vol. 110, no. 2, February 2010, pp. 189–98. […]
Paper or Plastic? Plummeting Dead Mice
If you’re going to lace dead mice with poison, and drop them from helicopters into a rainforest in Guam in such a way that they become entangled high in the trees where they might murder the brown tree snakes, but you want to avoid (as much as possible) having the toxically tasty mouse corpses fall […]
Mouse question in the House (of Lords)
The following exchange of information took place in Britain’s House of Lords on 3 March, 2010 (thanks to investigator Philip Ailes for bringing it to our attention): Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I was in total ignorance that there was anything of the nature of a mouse helpline until this Question Time. Can […]
Mice Levitated in Lab
Ig Nobel Prize-winningwork of Andre Geim and Michael Berry, Yuanming Liu, Da-Ming Zhu, Donald M. Strayer and Ulf E. Israelsson have used magnets to levitate mice. Their study in the journal Advances in Space Research tells all, or at least much, or what they did. Called “Magnetic levitation of large water droplets and mice“, it […]