This blog post will give you some interesting facts about these pesky critters so that you can better protect your home from them!
After doing extensive research on the question of whether mice can climb walls or not, I came to the conclusion that they in fact can. A simple google search will give you the answer, “Both rats and mice are good climbers and can climb vertical walls if the surface is rough enough, and “shimmy” up between walls and drain pipes”(basingstoke.gov).
This was an easy answer, but I wanted to go further and find their lim its on this skill. My real question was, “to what extent can mice climb walls?”.To see how they climb walls, I headed over to YouTube and searched a video of the act just to be certain. I found a very interesting and somewhat comical video of a man chasing a mouse as it waves back and forth, climbing walls, and even jumping.
I had already found out that mice can climb walls and now I am finding out they can jump too? To be certain it was not edited, I headed to good trusted google once again and found that, “Unfortunately, both mice and rats are very good climbers, and they can even ascend straight up a vertical surface if the texture is rough enough.
They can also jump up to 18 inches and slip through surprisingly small cracks and holes, making them very difficult to catch”(thisoldhouse.com).
Personally, I have never seen a mouse or rat in person and was shocked at the mobility of them. I was still not satisfied and wanted to figure out how they are able to do these things.
I found that mice actually have tiny, sharp claws on the end of each one of their toes to help them climb up the sides of textured walls. I know a lot of people seem to have problems with mice, but really wanted to figure out how many people this actually affects. I found that, “82% of U.S. homes were found to have mouse allergens“(National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences”.
It is amazing how many people have to deal with mice and I am surprised I have not seen one myself. I was shocked to see this statistic and it got me thinking, how can we use this information forwards something to help capture these mice for people with pest problems.
I had an idea on putting some type of mouse trap on walls in order to get them from another angle. I would have to go further into research and figure out how I would go about it and would be an interesting project in the future.
This was a very interesting topic to me and continues to be for me. I am very interested in testing the limits on these genetic phenomenons and maybe end up researching another pest and figure out some other amazing finds I could get.
Author: Nathan Colonna-Ramirez – Arizona State University