Some mice have a best friend or girlfriend, learns this movingly beautiful booklet

Mice wash each other. Usually in two or three. A mouse that wants to be washed lies flat on the stomach with a cheek to the ground. Another mouse, who wants to go into it, first licks the cup and ears of the first mouse and sometimes also the rest of the body. Often the washed mouse then washes the washer. Three balls often have a washer and two crops.

For example, mice have much more social behavior that I knew nothing about. Some mice have a best friend. Friendly mice turn their tails together quickly as a greeting. A mouse that wants to run is sometimes waiting for an occupied running wheel until it is free. One of the mice that writer Eva Meijer took in the house turned with the mouse hands to estimate the speed of the rotating running wheel before she jumped in.

Meijer (personal pronouns them/their) adopted a group of female ex-laboratory mice three times from August 2020, in the context of a project in which small laboratory animals that were not used in experiments were relocated to private individuals. The first group consisted of ten quiet brown mother mouse, then nine bright white mice and then another six timid white mice. Initially Meijer had difficulty keeping the mice apart within a group, but they soon became familiar with the different external characteristics and personalities. They describe them in the movable (and beautifully designed) booklet Mouse life.

In addition to being a writer, Eva Meijer is also a philosopher, visual artist and singer-songwriter and all those disciplines are discussed in this booklet. Meijer has photographed and drawn the mice and written songs for them; Some of those photos, drawings and lyrics are in Mouse life. They also sung the songs for the mice and played on the guitar and the ukulele, « because they loved my voice. » My first thought with that sense was: oh yes, how does that do you know? But I quickly believed it, because Meijer really looked at the mice and then, I think, you can know what a mouse feels like you often know what another person feels while you can’t get his head in.

Mouse life Describes very beautiful behavior and culture of the mice that lived with Meijer (the last two died on March 18, 2023), and also gives a good introduction to non-human central thinking and the philosophy of animal rights and animal liberation. Meijer takes a position in it that some will find extremely. For example, they write that they are in the mice Mouse life In fact again used as laboratory animals by writing about them and perhaps also violates their privacy. Anyone who feels irritation, swallows them in and think: this is a book that is absolutely worth reading with the same openness and curiosity as that Meijer has given to the mice.

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