The house mouse is believed to have come here from central Asia where it lived mainly on the seeds of wild grasses.  The pest species is primarily the house mouse (Mus domesticus) and should not be confused with field mice, shrews and voles.

Physical Characteristics

Mice travel over their entire territory daily, investigating each change or new object that may be placed there.

Mice have poor vision; hence their activity patterns rely heavily on smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

Mice use the long sensitive whiskers near the nose and hairs on the body as tactile sensors. The whiskers and hairs enable the mouse to travel in the dark, adjacent to walls in burrows.

Mice also have an excellent sense of balance, enabling them to walk along telephone wires, ropes and similar thin objects. Mice are excellent jumpers, capable of leaping at least 12 inches vertically.

Mice can jump against a flat vertical surface using it as a springboard to gain additional height.

They can run up almost any vertical surface; wood, brick, weathered sheet metal, cables, etc.

They can easily travel for some distance hanging upside down.

Although they are good swimmers, mice tend to take to water only if left with no other alternative.

Mice are basically nocturnal in nature.

Breeding Habits

House mice breed throughout the year and can become pregnant within 48 hours of producing a litter. There are usually about 6 mice to a litter and females may produce as many as ten litters (about 50 young) per year. It takes 18 to 21 days for gestation, and 35 days for a mouse to mature. Most mice live anywhere from 15 to 18 months.

Nesting Habits

They make their nests out of the same types of soft materials as rats, and as many as 3 females may use the same nest. They commonly nest in insulation in attics, also in stoves and under refrigerators. Mice do not travel far from their nest, about 12 to 20 feet.

Feeding Habits

Mice normally feed 15 to 20 times per day and will eat pretty much anything a human will eat. Food preference is cereal or seed, but they also gnaw through insulation or wires, sheet rock, storage boxes, etc.

Mice are nibblers. They do small amounts of damage to many food items in "home range", rather than doing extensive damage to any one item. While mice are nibblers and feed many times in many places, they have two main feeding periods, at dusk and just before dawn. They have to consume about 10% to 15% of their body weight every 24 hours and require extremely small amounts of water.

Mice Droppings

Mice droppings sometimes are confused with droppings from the larger species of roaches, such as the American roach. Mice droppings are smooth with pointed ends, and are 1/8th to 1/4 inch long. In six months, one pair of mice can eat about 4 pounds of food and during that period produce some 18,000 faecal droppings.

Disease Carriers

Mice may infect food with their droppings transmitting such organisms as salmonella and the microscopic eggs of tapeworms. Mice transmit disease in a number of ways including biting man, infecting human food with their droppings or urine, indirectly via the dog or cat and bloodsucking insects.

Rodent Factoid:

In the great mice plagues of 1916 and 1917 in Australia, a report is made of a farmer who baited for mice and picked up 28,000 dead on his veranda the following morning, and only stopped "because he was tired". Usually, these plagues are terminated by a disease epidemic which quickly reduces the population of mice to normal numbers.

Control of Mice

Good sanitation is essential for effective long term control. Mice can enter any opening larger than 1/4 inch, making it virtually impossible to completely mouse proof a building. The control of mice can be widely varied, depending on the individual situation. It may range from physically altering the conditions allowing the infestation, such as covering holes, filling cracks, etc. to baiting or trapping.

Learn more about the House Mouse by clicking here for details