Cannibalism!

Well my sister wanted to take care of the mice(had 3 has some of u know) until they were all eaten up by my bp, well i just walked in to check on how they were doing, they were being taken care of well accept they only had a little food available. When i saw them i thought they were all sleeping together in a little ball but the male and female were eatin the other mouse, half of its face was eaten off! I got questions to ask:

What caused them to eat the other one?

Tommorow i was supposed to feed my snake but would it be ok if i fed him the dead mouse today?(the cannabilism probably happened not to long ago cuz the mouse was still warm)

Um... gross. If two were male, and one female, the males probably fought to the death. However I would NOT feed it to my snake for the chance that there is something else wrong with the mouse. Just my opinion.

I would not feed it to my snake. Might be something wrong with it. Shelby is correct also, if there were 2 males, the other male would have killed off the 2nd (weaker, smaller, etc) for mating rights. But, that dont explain why they were "eating" it as you say they were, cause normally, one will be killed off, often wounded as you said (face torn off, etc). I kinda think it may have been a combination of the fact, the one that was killed was a male, and they also may have not had enough food, or felt they did not have enough. Mice are kinda strange like that. But I have seen rats do just that when there is not enough of food to go around.

I'm glad I'm not a mouse. :shock: Sick critters.

I've seen them eat their babies.. but not each other. They must have been really hungry.

well i went to check on them just a couple of seconds ago and the remaining ones were both dead! so i think there is a sickness goin around down here for them, or could they possibly have rabies? if i freez those and feed it to her later would it be alright?

I wouldnt chance it. You can pick up another for like $1.50 at the pet store.
Do you really want to feed sick mice to your bp to save a buck fifty?

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Originally Posted by green_man

Do you really want to feed sick mice to your bp to save a buck fifty?

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green_man is correct, freezing is not an effecient method for killing parasites, bacteria, or viruses. You'd be better off just tossing them.

-adam

no, I would most definently not feed those mice to your snake. Too many chances that something is wrong with them and would get your snake sick. Mice aren't all that expensive so just go buy some more and feed your snake with those, though I might go to a different store to get the mice. Who knows how many of the ones where you got those might be sick.

Sometimes, if a mouse dies naturally, the tankmate mice will eat it to dispose of the body. (in nature, this would presumably prevent a rotting mouse corpse from smelling and thereby attracting predators to the mouse den.) I have heard this happen when a female gives birth to dead young; that's why you sometimes see the gruesome sight of a female eating her young; they were probably defective and not able to survive anyway.
Maybe there was just some sort of disease in your situation though.

This is like when my first batch of breeder rats killed one of their own a couple of months ago. I then got rats from an individual instead of a pet store and they're doing great, so I'd see if you know anyone with mice you can get them from instead.