Dear Anita

I feel like pets and animals are heartwarming 💙 they relieve stress and fill the heart with love. scientists on youtube tickled mice and they measured their brain waves with an eeg and they discovered that mice like humans when they laugh release endorphins that help relieve stress and pain. the first mouse in space named hector (who lived to be eight years old) helped scientists understand the long term impacts on bone structure of being space for astronauts. mice eat grains like honey nut cheerios, fruits like apples and bananas, and vegetables like carrots and lettuce much like people.  most mice live 1-2 yrs but some with good care and proper nutrition live 3-5 yrs. Some mice that have been genetically enhanced to slow aging in scientific studies can live up to four years or sometimes more. Scientists have discovered that mice are social animals, they like to have company and get depressed if they are alone. Being with other mice helps them develop social cues like grooming each other to show who the dominant mouse is or just to show that mouse likes the other mouse. Mice can sometimes tussle, standing on their hind paws facing each other and they try to knock each other down, whichever one gets pinned is the lesser one and the other is dominant,  it’s like mice wrestling 🐭

Scientists have discovered that mice have a strong sense of smell and some have trained them in military to sniff bombs so they can be deactivated by military special units. Mice weigh smaller than the weight to trigger mine bombs so they can be used to help with sniffing out hidden bombs.

Furthermore, mice have short term memory that is only about 2wks but they can remember sounds and words long term. Mice can remember the voice of people who talk to them frequently and they can react accordingly. If a person talks kindly and treats mice kindly the mouse will remember the person as a kind person and will happily squeak when they hear the person speaking. Since they have a good sense of smell too, mice can remember scents of people who gave them treats and they’ll be excited hoping for more treats. Mice are very smart and some can solve mazes.

A mouse that is happy popcorns, hopping around swishing their tail lightly. They’ll have a series of squeaks that sounds like they are singing “squeak, squeak, pique, squeek”

here is my mouse mochitea popcorning on the playground

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EoOPl-NbUEVwGdmlzY-UKs2GBOipPlZ5/view?usp=drivesdk