Scottish Mammals by Robin Hull

Author:Robin Hull [Hull, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857905451
Publisher: Birlinn

Description and behaviour

The ubiquitous house mouse is smaller than the wood mouse with a dull greyish coat. (Thorburn 1974)

Country mice are easier to trap than urban mice probably because of behavioural differences between them. Their fecundity and adaptability to various habitats have led to there being numerous sub-species, many of which show behavioural differences that may be genetically determined and cause taxonomic nightmares.

Singing mice are sometimes heard whose vocalisations may last several minutes; they tend to be males suffering disease or damage to the larynx. (Burton 1968)

House mice will eat anything man eats and they also seem particularly fond of electrical insulating materials and so may be arsonists.

With a life span of up to two years, a gestation of 20 days and anything from 6 to 10 litters of 4–8 young per year it is perhaps surprising there are not more of them, and so there would be were it not for their many predators, the leader of which is almost certainly the weasel.

The commonest evidence of house mice are their small, cylindrical, slightly pointed droppings. (Bang & Dahlstrom 1974).

History, distribution and status

The house mouse is said to have originated in Asia in remote times, when man changed from being hunter-gatherer to farmer, and then travelled with him, like Ruth, wherever he went, to every inhabited part of the world. It is among the oldest of British mammals, reaching Britain as a probable hitchhiker in grain sacks certainly by the Iron Age and possibly the Bronze Age. There are definite remains dating from the Iron Age and there is a single skeleton in Bronze Age strata in Somerset. However, because of later rabbit excavation this level is suspect. (Yalden 1999)

A St Kildan sub-species of the house mouse was first described in the 1800s but it disappeared from St Kilda after the evacuation of the island in 1930 (Stephen 1979) when the St Kildan field vole (also a sub-species) ousted the house mouse from the abandoned cottages. (Taylor 2002)

The species is incredibly adaptable; there are even colonies in meat refrigerators in perpetual darkness, below freezing temperatures, living entirely on meat and nesting in carcases. (Burton 1968)

Relationship with man

They destroy or spoil huge quantities of grain in stores and granaries, and despite Burns’s assertion that ‘a daimen-icker in a thrave’s a sma’ request’ because of their numbers they are responsible for great loss.

Literary references

To a mouse

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