From: Loki100l00@aol.com
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 00:20:53 MST
>snip<
[Kalkor]
I raised mice for several years as a child, played around with an extensive
gene pool that I acquired from many shops around the region, had a
twice-weekly breeding schedule, sold the babies down the river for pets and
reptile food, somewhere between 8 and 20 per week. At any moment I usually
had 8 females pregnant and 8 with a litter(two bred per week, gestation 4
weeks, birth to weaning 4 weeks), plus a "harem" of 10-15 males, and dozens
of females that were not of age or fallow or it wasn't their time according
to my genetics charts.
MICE ARE CANNIBALS
The female gets put in the male's cage to breed, and removed as soon as she
gets preggers. Why? If you put the male in the female's cage she WILL kill
and eat him. If you leave a male in with a female who has babies, he will
eat the babies, and she will fight with him and usually prevail.
In the first couple weeks of their lives, the babies will be eaten by the
mother if she is startled in any way. I'm not certain why she does this, but
I suspect it's "I can always have another litter, and I don't want to waste
the energy I have put into this one by allowing something else to eat them,
and I sense danger, and I can either protect myself or my babies. Look out
for numero uno!"
[/Kalkor]
>snip<
This makes more sense for rodents with very short generation times and
lifespans. It would interest me to see a real study about the rates of
cannibalism in various species. I would suspect that it probably occurs more
frequently in shorter lived animals, and less so in longer lived ones. If
reproduction always lies just around the corner, eating a few of your own
kind to get there would make some evolutionary sense.
-Jake
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