Why don't mice figure out the moustrap?

[Danny D.]

Why can't mice figure out that the trap is not a good thing for them?

I had been hearing scurrying sounds in the pump house while I was working on the backflow valve, so, even though I hate to hurt animals, they were living inside the blue bladder and I just don't know what mischief they can do there.

So I put two rat traps next to the opening where the water pipes go into the blue bladder pressure tank.

Wouldn't you know it, TWO mice were caught, one in each trap, with all the peanut button licked clean from the trap closest to the entrance.

I assume mouse #1 got caught in rat trap #1 and died instantly (these are the standard spring-loaded six-inch-long rat traps, so they're overkill for mice).

Then, I assume mouse #2 licked clean trap #1 and then proceeded to trap #2.

QUESTION: Why can't mice figure out that the trap is not a good thing for them?

I mean, can't they "see" the dead mouse in trap #1? Can't they make that connection?

It boggles my mind that they can't figure this one out ahead of time.

PS: I didn't want to waste the mice, so I left them outside in the open, and within an hour or two, something took them away (coyote? fox? vulture?).

[Doug Miller]

"Danny D." wrote in news:notk2f$sae$ [e-mail]:

[...]

Because they're stupid.

Obviously not.

Doesn't boggle mine. They're *mice*, for Pete's sake.

[Taxed and Spent]

And they don't have to figure it out. Plenty more mice where they came from.

[bob haller]

i use live traps for getting rid of mice. empty trap twice daily away from home

[21blackswan]

because, they have all the sex they want, so the next best thing is food

they simply can't help themselves...?

marc

[ChairMan]

As the saying goes " The second mouse gets the cheese"

[ko]

mice are like democrats, all they do is eat, f*ck and destroy stuff.

[Frank]

good analogy

[Gary]

Some mice figure it out. As "Chairman" said further down in the thread, "The second mouse gets the cheese."

You only catch the dumb mice in your traps. Same as only the dumb criminals are in prison.

[CRNG]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2016 23:43:12 -0000 (UTC), "Danny D." wrote in

What knid of traps and how did you position them?

[Danny D.]

They're standard rat traps positioned to each side of the pipe at the entrance to the water bladder where they were living inside.

Like this:

[Danny D.]

That's probably true!

After the first couple of sets, the smart ones seem to be leaving the peanut butter alone!

[Danny D.]

That's probably true!

After the first couple of sets, the smart ones seem to be leaving the peanut butter alone!

[Gary]

Bacon works good in mousetraps too. Try that.

[Mayayana]

"Danny D." wrote

| Why can't mice figure out that the trap is not a good thing for them? |

Why can't alcoholics figure out that drink is bad for them? For that matter, what magical spell causes so many people to return, again and again, to fast food joints selling industrial food-like products that make them sick? Why do people stare at cellphones while walking into traffic? Didn't they see the last tech-addict get run over? Why do we get fat? Isn't that rather dumb?

The difference between us and mice is mainly that we're highly intelligent, so we can cook up complex rationalizations to explain why we chose to do what we couldn't help doing anyway. We brilliantly maintain a veneer of plausible free will. :)

I've been having trouble with mice in the kitchen lately. We were given a very good trap from Switzerland. Despite droppings and scent left behind by one mouse, the next one gets caught the next night. I caught 4 in about 10 days. My suspicion is that the scent may draw the next mouse.

On the other hand, I don't kill them. The trap is just a cage. I then take them out to nearby woods and release them. So there's no scent of dead mouse in the trap. I don't understand people who take pleasure in killing innocent creatures. I suspect they were beaten by a merciless father in their youth and now find weakness and vulnerability enraging and contemptible. But maybe they just have no capacity for empathy. Or perhaps they just can't figure out that hatred is not good for them? Whatever the case, I don't see any need to kill mice.

In general I find mice to be highly intelligent and wiseguys by nature. When I started blocking their entrances one time in a cabin where I was staying they began to run across my body, and pull otherwise harassing stunts, when I went to bed. The message was clear: You leave us alone and we'll leave you alone. What impressed me was that they had to have some kind of understanding of communication in order to issue their warning to me. (But I couldn't sleep with mice running over me. I ended up catching them by hand in the middle of the night, until I had them all (3) trapped. Oddly, they seemed to almost give up when I took that approach. They didn't seem to try very hard to avoid capture.)

[Paintedcow]

I'm an animal lover, but mice are NOT on my list of animals to love. I dont take pleasure in killing them, but I do it because they are destructive pests. If you release them, they will just come back or go to another home to do damage. The most humane thing you can do is to kill them quickly. The best method is to feed them to a hungry cat. Killing mice and rats, or flys, mosquitoes has nothing to do with hatred, and rodents are far from innocent, when they destroy your clothing or do damage to your home.

[Paintedcow]

Same reason that some people drink excessive alcohol, get sick, lose their drivers license, lose their jobs, become homeless, and still go back and drink again.... and again.....

[ZZyXX]

the body to see what they can find in the wrecked vehicle. o_O

from-woman-5531076.php

in other neighborhoods they just rig their new cars so it looks like it will pass smog laws, or they might just butcher diseased cows for human consumption, but I've always liked the ones that allow residential areas to be built next to dangerous facilities

[Cindy Hamilton]

A mouse's brain is about 0.4 gram. (For comparison, the contents of a packet of Sweet-n-Low (that pink packet) is about 1 gram.)

I doubt there's any room in there for cause-and-effect analysis.

Cindy Hamilton

[DerbyDad03]

Why would anyone waste bacon on a mouse. Good grief...it's *bacon*.