# Would mice kill and eat eachother?



## ryanr1987 (Mar 7, 2009)

I had 6 baby mice living all female and the same age about 2-3months old. One of them was the runt and i just got back from a 2 day trip and cleaned them out and found teh runt missing but i found fur and bones. Would the mice of attacked and killed her?


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## Mischievous_Mark (Mar 16, 2008)

Runts rarely live long after birth so its likely that shes died over night and teh others have eaten the body "to keep away predators"


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## Emmaj (Dec 3, 2007)

ryanr1987 said:


> I had 6 baby mice living all female and the same age about 2-3months old. One of them was the runt and i just got back from a 2 day trip and cleaned them out and found teh runt missing but i found fur and bones. Would the mice of attacked and killed her?


 
yes mice can be terrible for this 

i had one mouse that i called hannible as he ate all 3 of his cage mates in one night..............and they were both female :devil:


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## Twiglet (May 6, 2009)

It seems most rodents will clean up their dead by eating them. I had a male fancy rat that killed several others and ate bits of them. Was pretty nasty. 
It's fairly *normal* behaviour so dont worry too much.

Kat


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## pigglywiggly (Jul 19, 2008)

all mine cannabalised eat other one by one, the adults killed each other, and the mothers killed their own babies one by one.
so horrible


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## saxon (Feb 26, 2007)

I've had mice kill each other ocassionally but nothing near as often as implied here.

Males rarely kill females it's usually a pair of females that will kill the male.
I've had the odd litter eaten but that's rodents for you.

Mostly it's a natural death that is cleaned up as Mark says.


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## Twiglet (May 6, 2009)

pigglywiggly said:


> all mine cannabalised eat other one by one, the adults killed each other, and the mothers killed their own babies one by one.
> so horrible


The above suggest an environmental problem. In how many years of breeding rodens I've never seen anything like this. As I've said before, its suprising how often something simple like a protein deficiency can result in cannibalised litters but to be killing eachother like that? Something must have been wrong. I'm not saying YOU did anything wrong but thats just not normal behaviour at all. 

Kat


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## saxon (Feb 26, 2007)

Twiglet said:


> The above suggest an environmental problem. In how many years of breeding rodens I've never seen anything like this. As I've said before, its suprising how often something simple like a protein deficiency can result in cannibalised litters but to be killing eachother like that? Something must have been wrong. I'm not saying YOU did anything wrong but thats just not normal behaviour at all.
> 
> Kat


I had something similar happen, not on that scale though, in some lab mice I bought a few years ago.

It wasn't so much the environment as the fact they were so inbred, even for labs, although I did change their feed from lab blocks ot my own home mixed diet!


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