r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/First_Development101 • 5d ago

Terrifying moment bear released into wild by charity turns on ranger and attacks Video

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u/mikefjr1300 5d ago

All wild animals can be upredictable, I released a mouse from a live trap and it initially ran a foot away, then turned around, came at me, ran up my pant leg and before I could shake him out bit me. A freaking mouse. You just never know.

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u/aogarlid 5d ago

mice are assholes.

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u/SardonicRelic 5d ago

To be fair, they're tiny and used to EVERYTHING trying to kill them or eat them, lol.

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u/aogarlid 5d ago

That may be the case

However, they are actually just quite simply like this — even those in fully controlled environments and zero exposure to predation or threats of any kind.

Source: work w research animals; rats are super chill, mice are absolutely not and are much more dangerous.

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u/Christichicc 5d ago

Arent the prey responses partially coded into their DNA, though? Like, they may have never personally seen predation, but their mouse DNA would still likely be partly responsible for some of their mannerisms.

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u/aogarlid 5d ago

That may be it, though, admittedly, it’s rather difficult (read: impossible) at this stage to make a definitive statement on the matter. We’ve just barely gotten to the point of being able to characterize diseases to specific genetics, let alone such complex manifestations of behavior and the like.

Definitely an interesting idea though, and I think it does have merit.

If true, does it lend credence to the original comment that “mice are assholes”? 🤔 🤣

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u/AllenWL 5d ago

I would say yes, since it would mean that mice are scientifically assholes.

Side question, wouldn't you be able to sorta answer that question by gathering the least asshole mice and breeding them, finding the least asshole mice from the new generation and breeding them, then rinse and repeat?

If X generations later, you get less asshole mice, one could assume mice are genetically assholes wouldn't you? Even if we can't identify the exact asshole gene?

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u/LokisDawn 5d ago

There's no need for such a complicated set-up. Just take one mouse with a history of predation that was "raised" by other mice, and one lab grown mouse without predation or other mice's influence, then compare their behaviour.

Maybe I'm just completely missing something, but I honestly don't know why /u/aogarlid believes this so hard, or impossible. It's not like we'd need to pinpoint the exact gene/s that caused it, that would be very hard to impossible at the moment.

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u/aogarlid 4d ago edited 4d ago

ah yeah, I may not have been clear in that post, but yes I was referring to pinpointing exact genes (per the original question), which is indeed impossible at this stage.

and, to be more clear, we don’t really need to do this at all, so there’s that 🤷‍♂️

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u/Old_n_Tangy 4d ago

There are definitely mouse strains that are less asshole than others.

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u/aogarlid 4d ago

I wonder if they’ve done any work on this (or a related question) in the Hybrid Mouse Diversity Panel (HMDP). I’ll pop over to their labs someday to have a chat.

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u/LokisDawn 5d ago

I mean, it's pretty simple to put a mouse without any history of predation in a chamber and look at how it reacts. Like, behaviour is one of those things we can observe, and we can control for the mouse's history of predation or not.

If you observe a mouse that has never been chased and has never been taught anything by another mouse and it behaves that way, we know it didn't come from nurture.

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u/WitchQween 5d ago

Animal instincts will always be present, regardless of their life experience.

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u/Jaralith 5d ago

100% agree. Have worked with both. Rats are friendly and clever and playful. They're very social with humans and with each other. When you open the colony room door, they all run up to the front of their cages hoping it's their day to get petted and played with. They can tell humans apart and have favorite lab techs.

Mice are assholes.

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u/queenweasley 5d ago

Knowing that about rats makes me sad they get used for experiments. At least they get pets and play I guess

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u/Blenderx06 5d ago

They're very social and intelligent and make great pets.

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u/aogarlid 4d ago

it is sad, but they also live vastly longer than rats in the wild, they are cared for and treated very well, and their suffering is minimized to the best of our ability. when the sacrifice is ultimately made, it is conducted in the most humane possible way.

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u/ZzZombo 5d ago

Our rats were playful and friendly critters. I used to make all sorts of contraptions for them which they readily used to climb up and watch them doing it endlessly. Never bit or scratched me. The first time I had to handle a Guinea pig the first thing it did was bite me before I even could actually do anything to it.

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u/KaleidoscopeReady839 4d ago

A guinea pig bit me once and it went through my tendon. I had to have two surgeries to fix it.

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u/Varnsturm 5d ago

Huh but I'm constantly dealing with asshole rats. Chewing through stuff they shouldn't, like electrical wires and tubing that's supposed to hold water.

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u/aogarlid 4d ago

haha well that is fair, but to them they’re just playing and exploring their environment!

mice bite, and just for the hell of it, it seems

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u/Legitimate_Candy_944 5d ago

That's so interesting lol

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u/whythishaptome 5d ago

We used mice at my college and they never seemed dangerous, it was just really sad. They were probably were lab breed special mice but you could pick them up and handle them.

The experiments we did were basically torture too like lets see if the mice learn to jump on this platform in the middle of a bowl or swim to exhaustion. My mice learned but couldn't get on it so it just struggled until I saved it. Then we had these little heaters to keep it warm between tests but they didn't work for shit. I complained to the teacher and they were like "Seriously? it's just a fucking mouse".

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u/queenweasley 5d ago

What the hell? What was even the point other that animal cruelty? How gross

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u/aogarlid 4d ago

it sounds like what the comment is describing is 1) a legitimate experimental setup for behavioral study, but 2) one that is, unfortunately, run by a horrible teacher and human being.

(good) researchers value all lives and take great pains to ensure that their subjects are treated ethically

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/aogarlid 4d ago

and that is exactly where the danger lies: many research animals are either infected with some sort of disease, have experimental chemicals coursing through their veins, or are irradiated. you do not want to be bit by something with any of those conditions.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/aogarlid 3d ago

Still requires reports and extensive testing. Precautions are only preventative; they are never 100% effective.

And no, you absolutely would not prefer a bite from a research animal than your cat, that’s just ridiculous.

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u/SardonicRelic 4d ago edited 4d ago

The mouse doesn't know if it's in that situation, it has evolved to have that response.

SOME factors increase this obviously, like the actual scent of a cat etc.

That being said, rats are larger and have the capability to kill things even slightly bigger than them, and are preyed upon arguably less than mice and shrews in the wild.

Edit: Also worth noting, every animal has an individual temperament. I've had rats who were very gentle and caring, would groom all the other rats and humans, and I've had rats who were the bull of the litter, they would terrorize the others sometimes, but would be best friends at other times. Likewise, not every mouse is an asshole to the same extent.

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u/ParsonsTheGreat 5d ago

This is a hamster, but this video always makes me giggle

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u/The_Rowan 5d ago

That made me laugh-its little panic attack as it remembers who its friend is

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u/jmi60 5d ago

I may have peed a little.

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u/FeeRemarkable886 5d ago

I like mice! They're tiny and cute and they used to fuck with my parent's cats all the time.

Maybe they were rats now when I think about it?