By Bobby Panza

Mouse trouble at home? There’s a scientific study for that. Led by Megan Pfifer-Rixey, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, a team is currently collecting mice from New York City to compare their lives to those of mice living in other cities and rural areas around New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Here’s your chance to have your pesky roommates removed from your apartment, house, or business — humanely, free of charge, and in the name of science.

West Side Rag recently spotted a “We want your mice” flyer at the West 79th Street and Broadway subway station and reached out, frankly, to see if it was for real.

“We’re interested in whether mice in urban areas behave differently than mice in rural areas,” said Pfifer-Rixey on a phone interview with West Side Rag. “Over time, those differences can shape how populations evolve and adapt.”

The team is hoping to capture at least 15 mice in New York City for their first collection season. They plan to collect mice again next year to fill in any gaps of information and cover boroughs not reached this time around. This will give them a robust representation for their study, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Here’s how it works: the collection team sets up traps, baited with peanut butter and oats. “Turns out peanut butter is a great bait for a lot of reasons and the oats keep it from getting sticky,” said Pfifer-Rixey, the mouse hunter with a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Click on the link to see the traps they use, designed not to hurt the mice. The next morning, they pick up the traps and take the mice away.

Typically, in apartments, two to five traps are set, depending on the space. What’s the greatest number of mice they’ve ever caught in a single New York City night so far? Pfifer-Rixey said they’ve mostly been trapping singles. When it comes to collecting in rural areas, though, it’s a different ball game. “It doesn’t happen all the time but every so often we’ll get like 10 mice at one farm in one night,” she said.

Let’s face it, New Yorkers, we know from experience that we have a very distinctive bunch of rodents around here. One of Pfifer-Rixey’s teammates, Jason Munshi-South, Ph.D, worked on a study at Fordham University, which found that New York City has genetically distinct uptown and downtown rats. Their work scored them a 2017 article in The Atlantic, which described the effort as “the most comprehensive genetic portrait of the city’s most dominant rodent population.” The study got so granular that Matthew Combs, a Fordham graduate student working on it, said, “If you gave us a rat, we could tell whether it came from the West Village or the East Village.”

One of the variables the Pfifer-Rixey’s team will be examining is the diet of urban versus rural mice and the metabolic effects. “Urban mice will be eating more people food,” she pointed out. Another focus is mouse movement and willingness to explore. “We’re looking to see if they’re willing to cross an open field or whether they prefer to hide out.” They’re also interested in mouse stress levels and the extent to which they can be measured. Pfifer-Rixey thinks there’s a reasonable expectation that mice in urban areas are more comfortable in close contact with humans.

If mice are getting too close for your comfort, email Megan Pfifer-Rixey and her team at WeWantMice@gmail.com to have them gently taken away. This study could still be years away from conclusion, but we’ll be checking in with the team to see if they can share any developments along the way.