Shy mice may not take bait

Being bold doesn’t alway pay off, especially when you’re a mouse, with the trap-shy far more likely to survive eradication, academics say.

Hanging back from the pack pays dividends when you’re a shy mouse looking to survive eradication, academics say. Picture: Trent Perrett

Shy mice not bold enough to try different types of food could survive poisoning attempts by the NSW government and form a second plague, says an academic from the University of Sydney.

Conservation biologist Peter Banks says shy mice often avoid “strange-looking pieces of grain” and thus successfully avoid poisonous bait.

The NSW government on Thursday announced it had sought permission from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to deploy 5000 litres of one of the world’s most effective rat poisons, anticoagulant bromadiolone, to stop the mice plague.

While the chemical is likely to kill the majority of mice ravaging regional NSW, there will be those who say “no thanks”, Professor Banks said. “It’ll smell funny, it’ll taste funny and there will be some individuals that will say, ‘I’m not going to go for that and I’ll take my choices elsewhere.”

Professor Banks has researched behavioural patterns of mice by exposing them to challenges, including new environments, to test how they respond.

“It’s not like you’ve got the psychopath or the narcissist, but rather we measure them on a spectrum. We call the ones who are more exploratory the bolder types whereas the ones who hang around the wall are shyer.”