Did Humans Domesticate Mice?

Mice are the among the pests that nobody can seem to get rid of, along with flies, cockroaches and random critters. However, it seems that these little pitter-patters in the night may have been part of human life even way before dogs became the most-loved pets.

A research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that mice and people actually began living together even before humans learned how to farm -- as early as 15,000 years ago. This finding offered an unusual glimpse of human development, as the abundance of house mice seem to be everywhere -- even with nomadic ancestors experimenting of settling down, as noted by New Historian.

Dr. Thomas Cucchi of the Museum National D'Histoire Naturelle in Paris said that thanks to mice creeping into settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean region to steal wild grains and seeds, mice have learned to colonize almost every corner of the globe.

When nomads started to settle, they lived in round houses made of stone and mud. As they learned to forage for cereals like wheat and barley and hunted for meat like that of deer and wild boar, mice also thrived in the same environment. They made off with ample food to eat and few predators to scare them off. After all, this was before cats and dogs became domesticated.

While house mice thrived in an environment with human settlers, another species, called the Mus macedonicus (short-tailed mouse), was less tolerant with humans. National Geographic noted that while house mouse molars piled up during periods with prolonged human habitation, the short-tailed mice molars disappeared.

Fiona Marshall, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the study, noted that the behavior of house mice is an important example of animal-human commensalism or a relationship in which animals benefit from humans without affecting them. However, the creation of a new ecological niche provided for a new spin on evolution, and soon, these animals evolved to take advantage of the same environments already changed by humans. This has turned mice into what we know of them now -- household pests.