Mice Project Update

A lot has happened in the mouse longevity research project and I thought it was time for an update.

All the news is bad. A few days after my last report, I had a heater malfunction. The fool thing that heats my incubator switched itself from low to high. This had happened during the winter once and it took the temp up to 85. No big deal, I thought. This was in the spring and it took the temp to 100. Again, I thought it was no big deal, but half the mice died outright. They were equally split between experimental and control group. I thought mice could handle 100, we can.

Apparently not. Anyway. The experimental group continued to suffer the after-effects of the "near-cooking" as they all had open infected wounds on their butts from biting one another. They continued to die off about every 2 or 3 days until their was only one left. I thought the experiment was doomed.

The last one (named Steve) had no one left to bite him. He had a dramatic turn-around in his health and his butt has nearly healed up. Today the wound is very nearly gone altogether. The first picture is of the Daves. The second is Steve.

All seem happy now, although the Dave's fight tooth and nail every day. They are 5 months old and generally live 18-30months. I am hoping Steve will live 50 months as that is approximately the world's record............

Uncle Hans