The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

House Mouse

(Mus musculus), a mammal of the family Muridae of the order Rodentia. The body measures 7-10.8 cm long and the tail, 4.2-10.2 cm. The house mouse is distributed almost throughout the world, except the arctic and antarctic. It is a wild species of southern origin. It utilizes the foodstuffs and domiciles of man, as a result of which it has extended its natural area of distribution greatly, living almost everywhere. Under natural conditions it digs short simple burrows or uses those of other rodents. The female gives birth to five-seven offspring. The house mouse is omnivorous. Under favorable wintering conditions and when there is abundant food, massive reproduction is possible and its numbers increase enormously. It is a pest of grain crops and destroys and fouls foodstuffs. Further, it harbors the carriers of plague; in southern regions it is the chief source of human infection with tularemia. The house mouse served as the starting point for breeding pure strains of mice used in genetic and other experimental work as laboratory animals.

REFERENCES

Argiropulo, A. I. Semeistvo Muridae—myshi. Moscow-Leningrad, 1940. (Fauna SSSR. Mlekopytaiushchie, vol. 3, fasc. 5.)
Tupikova, N. V. “Ekologiia domovoi myshi srednei polosy SSSR.”
In Materialy k poznaniiu fauny i flory SSSR; fasc. 2: Fauna i ekologiia gryzunov. Moscow, 1947.
Freye, H. A., and H. Freye. Die Hausmaus. Wittenberg, 1960.

N. V. TUPIKOVA

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Standard statistics for cranial and dental measurements (in mm) of two sibling species of the genus Mus, the house mouse (Mus musculus) and the mound-building mouse (Mus spicilegus) from Slovakia.

Craniometric comparison and discrimination of two sibling species of the genus Mus (Mammalia, Rodentia) from Slovakia

Our phylogenetic tree suggests that the control region of mitochondrial DNA is suitable for subspecies or taxa of lower rank (i.e., population) for the availability of sequences in public database, although complete mitochondrial DNA is more desirable for distinguishing house mouse subspecies (Katouzian and Rajabi-Maham, 2013).

Distribution of Subspecies of the House Mouse, Mus musculus (Rodentia: Muridae) in East China as Inferred from Mitochondrial D-loop Sequences

House Mouse populations are not well known in northwestern Canada and Alaska.

Alien invaders: recent establishment of an urban population of house mice (Mus musculus) in the Yukon

* Woodrow, the White House Mouse (fiction) by Cheryl Shaw Barnes & Peter W.

Our White House--Looking In, Looking Out

The house mouse is the resident native or introduced species throughout Western Europe, North Africa, and North and South America.

Virus may trigger many cases of breast cancer

House Mouse - which George first dreamed up eight years ago but has only recently developed - even has the celebrity backing of music guru John McLaughlin.

A change for the BETTER!: 'We cut out middleman to save people money'

The town mouse is a house mouse (Mus musculus), while the country mouse is a field or wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus--which may account for Marie's country mouse living in a forest), and although, pace Pittock, there is some evidence that each species occasionally strays into the other's habitat, they tend not to stay there long, being better adapted and doubtless more comfortable in their customary surroundings.

Making mention of Aesop: Henryson's fable of the two mice

There are four species of mice in Wales - the most familiar and least popular is the house mouse;

CCW booklet focuses on the small mammals in Wales' ecology

Pet mice originally descended from the wild house mouse and the ancient Greeks worshipped them more than 3,000 years ago.

Pet watch

Erythropoietic protoporphyria in the house mouse. J Clin Invest 88:1730-1736.

Gene expression profiles associated with inflammation, fibrosis, and cholestasis in mouse liver after griseofulvin. (Article)

However, unlike this time last year when one lonely fieldmouse took refuge behind my cooker, feasting on dropped chips until Lucy the cat worked out how to get through the gap between cooker and sink, this mouse is your proper hefty house mouse. Plus mates.

maureen spring ON MONDAY: Celebrations that put the skids on mini- Olympics!

Overall, 67 specimens of seven species of mammals (all rodents) were captured: white-footed mouse (23 individuals in all habitats), deer mouse (14 individuals), hispid cotton rat (10 individuals), pygmy mouse (10 individuals), fulvous harvest mouse (7 individuals), eastern wood rat (2 individuals) and a house mouse (Mus musculus, 1 individual).

Small mammals of the Post Oak Savannah in east-central Texas