Are your mice telepathic?

by Roger Hutchings
First printed in January 1983

Considering that many thousands of mice bred by fanciers, and considering that wild mice will instinctively bite to escape from being handled, the Fancy encounters remarkably few biters. Mice that are handled regularly from an early age normally become tame for life, and most biters at shows are exhibited by novices who have not handled them enough to tame them. There is, however, another and altogether different kind of biter: the individual mouse that has been reared and treated in exactly the same way as all the others in a stud but which quite suddenly becomes a persistent biter as it advances to maturity. Such individuals are not usually wild in

Roger Hutchings (L) with Bernard Kelle

temperament in a general sense; they tend to bite just once when picked up, or even when a hand or finger is introduced into the home territory of their box, and after that behave calmly while being handled.
This second kind of biting has baffled generations of fanciers with its wayward and unaccountable coming and going. It seems to be almost invariably confined to bucks, which might suggest some kind of hormone disturbance effect, but this has been discounted by research. At a simpler level, it is claimed by some fanciers that biting can be avoided by washing the hands between picking up bucks, but in practice this “cure” just does not work in most cases. The problem sometimes arises when previously biter-free stock is acquiredby another fancier, but thios can occur even when the previous owner’s feeding routine is precisely continued, so the explanation is evidently not connected with diet. At various times in Fancy history it has been especially associated with certain varieties or strains, but there has been no sustained pattern of occurrence that can imply that it is inherited in any normally understood genetic sense. This apparently senseless summing-up is that this “non-wild” biting habit can occur arbitrarily and spread rapidly from individual to individual within a family, strain or variety like an epidemic, and suddenly disappear as mysteriously as it arose, while that fanciers affected are still groping to discover its cause and cure.
A similar mystery surrounds the fortunately now rare vice of whisker-biting. This habit is usually confined to does, and can also arise suddenly without known precedent, and with no observed evidence of environmental or hereditary causes, and as unexpectedly disappear for no apparent reason.
Both these occasional but very troublesome problems have existed since the earliest years of the Fancy (and probably before that, although unrecorded). They have never at any time been widespread, and many long-established fanciers have never encountered them except by hearsay. During the same period, however, many other problems which must have seemed equally mystifiying to early fanciers have been solved with quite straightforward and clear-cut explanations (such as, for instance, the genetic relationships of our standardised varieties). So why should the apparently simple problems of habitual biting by otherwise tame bucks and whisker-biting by does remain unexplained?
A feasible explanation rises from reports of scientists working on animal behaviour studies. Mice and other research subjects trained to induced habits such as solving maze puzzles to obtain food have been observed to become progressively more rapid in learning their lessons. This progress has surprisingly not been confined to their descendants: as soon as one animal learned to find its way through its maze without confusion or hesitation to claim its reward, others learned more and more rapidly, and this applied not only to its descendants, but to its unrelated neighbours and even to individuals of other strains in laboratories at a distance, even on the other side of the globe.
Clearly, neither inherited nor environmental factors can be held responsible for such transferred characteristics. To the more observant fanciers, however, they may not be as surprising as they were to scientists. I have often noted, for example, that when one mouse discovers a new habit, such as up-turning its feed pot after emptying it, or re-making its nest in another corner, other mice in other boxes often follow its example.
In scientific circles the original reports of apparent telepathic communication between trained stocks were initially received with distrust. More recently, specific experimental projects have provided some astonishing results. If any of my readers draw the conclusion that I am indulging in unscientific fantasy I would refer them (in the first instance) to a readily available paperback entitled LIFETIDE by the distinguished biologist Dr Lyall Watson (published by Coronet Books. I think they would find particular interest in “The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon” (from Page 173 on).

I have LIFETIDE, which is available on Amazon for £6.99 (used). If there is enough interest, I will print the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon in here. Ed