#studies with mice

[mudwerks]

(via Microplastics block blood flow in the brain, mice study reveals)

how trump won

[ahamkara-apologist]

Someone remind me to make a post speculating on how the loss of Riis fucked up Eliksni biology (and how the stress of being in Sol might have caused even more problems on an epigenetic scale) when its not late as shit bc the more I think about it the more and more horrified I get

[the-gayest-show]

Been rereading a LOT of his books I had to draw him

[mleprae]

I brought this up a few times, but one of my leprosy tidbits that fascinates me is how it affects mood and libido. Good chunk of some christian faiths didn't take kindly to leprosy, which may be rooted how many skin diseases were associated with terrible sins at the time, mostly sexual, a lot of texts we have of those specific parts were painting victims in a terrible light.

Especifically how leprosy turned people into monstrous violent rapists, those descriptions where mostly ignored by modern medicine researchers, because it obviously came from a group who didn't have the best intentions in mind.

Except that, the same description kept showing up in several texts, from different times, cultures, places, my favorite one has to be from a byzantinum physician who put it "A raging desire of Aphrodite, and a spontaneous periods of weakness." // "Lepers are especially desirous and burn for intercourse, then feel themselves weaker than normal." And at what point do you get so many descriptions of the same thing and go "Maybe we should investigate?" Because no one did, for hundreds of years!!!

And turns out... turns out... they were right!!! All along!!! Because you see, because leprosy is a dynamic disease, symptoms can get worse or better really quickly. One of the sites of predilection for leprosy is the testicles, so SURELY. SURELY. *grabs you by the shoulders* it affected testosterone production?!? *starts violently shaking you* the hormone that increases your libido and gives you mood swings??!? WHY DID NO ONE CHECK SOONER

Leprosy can "block" the production of testosterone, and because the body is a Beautiful Machine, it starts producing more LH, which stimulates the production of sex hormones, but because the way is blocked, the LH accumulates. When leprosy "relapses" all of these LH that have been building up, rapidly turn into T, causing mood swings, increased sexual desire, this peaks way more than normal T levels for the average person. I'm not sure why it causes people to be tired after that peak, maybe it takes a toll on the body, or that the hormonal levels stabilize right after which is lower than the peak. Either way, Messed. Up.

[bajingo]

A quick study and practice. It's fun to turn people into mice.

[barksbog]

honestly out of all the things that people don't tell you about starting testosterone i think "some animals will instinctively fear you more" caught me the most of guard

also mosquitoes will eat you alive

[childishred]

Field mouse

a biology study by me

[angelbinder]

you're miles up the shore without a paddle but the water was shallow

[skelejor]

"i want to study him" "i want to put her a maze"

what if i want to be the one studied? what if i wanna be given little puzzles and told i did a good job while you wrote "STUPID" on your clipboard? hmmmm??????????

[freakinthefridge]

a long and unnecessary investigation of apollo the mouse lord

this is so different from what i usually post, and, i'm gonna be honest, zero note post right here, but. here is a glimpse of irl me i go to school for classics and art history so

i was so enraptured by this moniker that i had to research it, and have nowhere to put this other than tumblr, so i hope at least one person other than me finds it interesting. I actually love doing this kind of stuff so if anyone wants to hear about peacock symbolism in early christianity or the development of the written english alphabet OR if you happen to know a shitload about mouse lord apollo please add on or correct me if i have anything wrong! all resources i used will be linked in blue

prepare yourself as i convert to correct punctuation and capitalization for ease of understanding

As a proper art/classics student (and just between us, Apollo is one of my favorite gods), I was SO excited when I started reading the Iliad for my class on the Trojan War (Emily Wilson translation) and got to these lines, spoken by Chryses, Apollo's priest, when he's praying to Apollo to bring a plague to the Greeks stationed outside of Troy (Agamemnon got Chryseis, Chryses's daughter, as a war trophy, and refused to return her):

"Lord of the silver bow, now hear my prayer! Great Guardian of Tenedos and Chryse and Sandy Cilla! Mouse Lord! If I ever built temples to your liking, ever burned fat thighs of oxen or of goats for you, fulfill this prayer for me, and let the Greeks suffer your arrows to avenge my tears!" (Book 1, lines 36-42)

Now this stopped me in my tracks. WHAT was that!? I have NEVER heard of Apollo being called "Mouse Lord" before. What an interesting image, a splendiferous vision of a strapping young Apollo with a mouse army in his wake (Willard Stiles, anyone?). Why is Apollo the Mouse Lord, you may ask? Well, I had the same question, burning such a deep ardor in my heart and soul, that I just HAD to investigate.

This is not quite where I started, but I will begin my explanation with some etymology (another love of mine!!!) "Mouse" is a word inherited into the English language from Germanic (according to the Oxford English Dictionary––SUCH a good resource; crazy story behind it but, alas, one for another time), deriving from sources such as Old Frisian mūs (pronounced "moos"), Middle Dutch muus/mues/muys, Old High German mūs/muos (there's a few others, but let us continue forward)––while Germanic and Romance languages are two different things, they both stem from Indo-European, so sometimes there is overlap between the two (illustrated nicely in this image). All these Germanic words ultimately have the same base as the Classical Latin mūs and the ancient Greek μῦς (mūs).

Side note: mūs is also the root for muscle. This is because the Greeks decided that when you flex it looks like there are mice under your skin.

For those of you familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, the gods will often be given a specific title to denote which role of the aforementioned god is being portrayed (e.g. Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("best and greatest") may have different iconography than, say, Jupiter Tonans ("thundering"). Interestingly, this trend can also be seen with images of Christ, such as Christ the Good Shepherd versus Christ Pantocrator ("ruler of the universe"). Apollo as Mouse Lord is known by the epithet "Apollo Smintheus," but where does this name come from? It seems the Greeks had another word for mouse: σμίνθος (smĭ́nthos) (the distinction between smĭ́nthos and mūs I will not claim to know; I study Latin, not Greek). Adding an -eus suffix (added to noun or adjective stems to form a masculine noun of a person concerned with a thing (i.e. Apollo associated with mice)), we get Smintheus Apollo.

OK. That's about it for the etymology. Take my hand, onward we march.

Let's do a little loop back to Chryses for a second. Because he prays to the "Mouse Lord," it's clear he's the priest at a temple of Apollo Smintheus. This temple was likely located in Sminthe/Smintheion/Smintheum, Chryse (the town from which Chryses and Chryseis would have been from), or Hamaxitus (all of these are in modern Turkey btw). It seems there is rumor of mice living inside this temple, although we will return to that in a bit. There are ruins of a similar temple, the Smintheum, in Gülpinar, Turkey, although these are much newer than the dates associated with the Trojan War or Homer, going back to the mid-second century BCE.

(It is to be noted that Homer is a very contested individual. The epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey are dated much later than the supposed dates of the Trojan War, and they started as oral poems. The Greeks borrowed the alphabet from the Phoenicians, and did not have a system of writing during the periods of the Trojan War or when the epics would likely have been composed. They were written down much later, and it's possible that Homer didn't even exist, or that he was multiple people. Along with this, the Trojan War is also contested. Obviously, it did not occur as it appears in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but there is archaeological evidence of some kind of war happening at some indeterminate point somewhere in Turkey.)

Not to mention, this temple has Latin inscriptions, which means this would have been built during the time of the Romans (images of the temple here). Here's an article about the inscriptions if the passion strikes you, I skimmed through it, but it's mostly just honorary stuff and your average temple engravings of built when and by whom. Interesting nonetheless. The cult statue, although no longer standing, was seemingly Apollo stepping on a mouse, as determined by the coins of Alexandria depicting the same image (Apparently sculpted by Scopas, which I have just learned, is also the name of a fish). I think there's also supposed to be a common image of Apollo holding the mouse in his hand––I've searched for these coins, although I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, so here is a picture of what seems, to me, to be closest.

Now all this is fascinating, but we still haven't discussed why Apollo might be the Mouse Lord, so let's not beat around the bush any longer.

There are two leading theories I've found that might explain this:

Apollo is a mouse-killer

The mice are sacred

Let's start with the former, since I personally like this version less. Let us remember, though, this is mythology, so neither of these theories are more correct than the other, and I've found evidence for both.

Apollo is the god of many things. I usually refer to him as the god of music, but he's also a god of archery, the sun, prophesy (remember this one), poetry, etc. He's quite the multi-talented guy. BUT, among these, he is a god of healing and diseases. This is clear, given that he's the one who sends the plague to the Greeks after they disrespect Chryses.

The Greeks would have known mice to be vermin, and might have associated them with disease. I've been looking at this website, which gives a pretty good summary of what we've been talking about (if not a little bit concise), but it's also literally a forum of ancient coins that says mice can't carry plague (they can, here's the CDC page for it), so take it with a grain of salt. A couple of the sites linked above translate "Smintheus" as "Mouse-Killer," although, as I explained, it really just means "person associated with mice." Apollo being a god of health, it's not a far stretch to assume that he would protect against plague, and I'm of the mind that the Greeks would know mice could bring sickness, and might pray to Apollo to keep them away. This would also explain why the image on Alexandrian coins and the cult statue depict Apollo with a mouse under his foot; literally quelling the plague. (I'm gonna be so honest I just wanted to include the next poem, I could not, for the life of me, think of a good segue into it):

Be it for bread, ye mice, you come, elsewhere Then go (my hut houses but scanty fare) Where you shall gnaw fat cheese and dried figs find, Full satisfied when on these scraps you've dined. If on my books again your teeth you whet, Poor feast you'll have, and one you will regret. (Ariston)

If mice were simply just pests to the Greeks and not plague-bringers, I find it difficult to believe Apollo would have an entire role dedicated to being a mouse-killer. Then again, this brings up an interesting question: why are the mice singled out? Lots of other vermin carry diseases––why is Apollo a mouse-killer and not, like, a general exterminator? What if these mice are important to him instead? So important that he gets the title of Mouse Lord? What if these mice... are sacred? (I hope that transition made up for the last one lol)

Remember that point about the mice living in the temple I said I would come back to? Here we are. It's mentioned in this article from University of Chicago Press that Claudius Aelianus, a Roman author, claimed there were mice living in the temple of Apollo Smintheus; these mice would have likely been fed well, given that they were eating food meant for Apollo. Honestly, I think this fact in and of itself makes a strong argument for why the mice might be sacred. Along with this, mice were a prophetic symbol, because they were "inspired by the vapours arising from the earth." As I mentioned before, prophesy is also in important aspect of Apollo. The most well known oracle of Apollo is the Oracle of Delphi, through whom he was known to speak to mortals. That being said, it's likely the oracle was inhaling ethylene, a central-nervous stimulant, from faults in the ground. While the temple at Delphi and the Smintheum are in two different places, these tales seem eerily similar. I'm not saying that the temple mice where inhaling stimulants and experiencing prophetic visions, but I can see why mice in a temple of Apollo might be associated with prophecies.

I also want to mention that the foundational myth of Hamaxitus has to do with mice AND prophecies. This myth can be found on the wiki page for Hamaxitus, or here (pg. 17). This excerpt is taken from the wiki:

Hamaxitus was founded by a band of Teucrian (i.e. Trojan) Cretans who were told by an oracle to found a city wherever the 'earth-born' (γηγενεῖς) attacked them. When they reached the area of Hamaxitus, a great horde of field mice ate all the leather on their equipment, and so they settled on the spot, interpreting the 'earth-born' of the oracle to have been the mice.

This myth was apparently written by Callinus of Ephesus, a greek elegiac poet, but, unfortunately, after, I kid you not, HOURS, of searching, I cannot confirm this. I have looked everywhere for some scrap of his poetry that has to do with mice––I have scoured the internet and I have scoured my library. I have touched books that likely have not been touched in 30 years. I found a book talking about Greek poetry that was written in Latin. I strongly considered translating a book from German to try to figure this out. No, I tell myself, you have hit a dead end. You do not need to translate a book from either Latin OR German to find out this one little scrap of information for a project no one asked you to complete and one which you are not getting a grade for. Alas, I digress. If you would like to read excerpts from the only two Callinus poems in apparently my entire library or the internet, here you go. They are not about mice.

I'm sorry to say, but that's about it. Apollo Smintheus is the Mouse Lord because he either protects against plague by killing mice, or mice are sacred to him because they're prophetic, and were a part of the foundational myth for one of his temples. I don't even like rodents that much, but I LOVE the idea of Apollo having a bunch of little mice that he carries around with him. I was mostly hitting research dead ends by the end of that, but honestly, I'm satisfied with what I've found. I don't really know what the point of all this was, but I was a woman possessed, and know more than I did two days ago so... I'd call that a success, I suppose.

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

i don't want much in life i just need the mersault prison gang in a polycule with episodic silly shenanigans and cute dates like the boyfriends webtoon style or a "keeping up with the convicts" show like is that too much to ask for.

i love them all so much i need the weird little clique dynamics. like, chuuya and sigma are the “nice ones”, so to speak, except when it comes to dazai and nikolai respectively. dazai and fyodor are still in a dick measuring contest and the others are so Over It. nikolai and dazai get along a bit too well and it is a Threat for public safety and sigma's sanity.

no one could actually tell if chuuya liked them at first besides dazai crowing he wanted to be their wife for realsies, don't worry about it, he loves you guys. spoiler alert chuuya does love them but they need time to get past him using sigma to play basketball and laughing at fyodor almost dying.

sigma isn't allowed to open the cookie jar without permission because he's three. fyodor isn't allowed to understand memes because he's older than time or something no one really knows no one cares. he may be the fossil to end all fossils but chuuya WILL smack his wrist like a misbehaving child when he or dazai get too handsy

they like dancing together and singing to each other in their native tongues and can end up sleeping dogpiled practically anywhere; chuuya has one of those massive fancy circular beds in his penthouse and fyodor has a castle on a mountainside he takes them to on vacations that no one questions because no one (except nikolai) would like the answer

ughhhhhhh they can even throw surprises dates for each other like the DoA trio arranging a tailored date for skk on the day they met and vice versa for the anniversary of forming the DoA, something for the days fyodor met sigma and nikolai, the first time fyozai learned there was someone else like them

occasionally they do something nice for chuusig so they can get their nails done together and complain about creepy demon geniuses trying to kill or kiss them and also their whacky origin stories.

[ribbitflings]

the absolute fucking letdown when youre excited af about something cool you found that pertains to your interests—thats like a gold mine or candy shop for you—and you try to share it with other people so they can enjoy it too, only to be met with disinterest or feeble attempts at feigning interest

[unopenablebox]

that post is instead of a four paragraph post about the usage of the word science. if you were wondering

[otaku553]

can I ask what ur summer research was about?!!! :0 (u absolutely don't have to answer if ur not comfortable, I'm just a giant nerd and loves to hear about research dhdnfjdmdjfng)

Of course!!! I’d be glad to talk about it!!

In short, my research over the summer was putting mice in mazes and looking at how well they remember mazes, how quickly they learn the maze, and how learning one maze can help them learn other mazes faster. More detailed under the read more!

Previous maze studies with mice have shown that mice can actually learn very quickly when they’re learning behaviors that are in line with their own evolutionary advantages rather than arbitrary associations. It’s the difference between telling a mouse “go around these tunnels and try to find water to survive” vs telling it “do these very specific and completely useless 5 things and then you’ll get water”. Maze navigation for mice is already a natural complex behavior: mice are burrowing rodents and already have the predisposition for running around tunnels. We set up a maze and cameras and infrared lights around it to record it doing its thing, so that we can look at its natural behaviors with no human interference.

The unique thing about this project is less the behavior and rapid learning of the mouse and more the maze that we use for the study, called the Manhattan Maze. I think my mentor created it but I’m not too certain? But the basic concept of it, as shown in the figure above, is that there are two boxes of parallel tunnels and one layer of acrylic in the middle. Through holes in the acrylic, the mouse can climb between the two layers and make a “turn”. Essentially, this maze is the most reconfigurable setup for studying mouse behavior in mazes possible, because the middle layer of acrylic, which we call a mask, can be changed 2^(n^2) ways (n being the number of channels in a layer) to make completely different mazes. For the figure above, a 4x4 Manhattan maze, we have 2^16 possible different configurations, but we were actually running it on an 11x11 maze, so there were 2^121 different possible configurations! This way, we can look at the mouse in tons of different mazes without actually having to make a new maze altogether and transfer the mouse every time.

And they learn extremely fast! The mazes we used were pretty much linear paths with small dead ends that weren’t far off from the main path, and required 9 turning decisions to get from starting point to end point. There were 3 of these different masks, and after training for one day on one of them, the next day, almost all mice that completed the training managed to learn completely new 9-decision masks in 3 hours or less!

[stuckasmain]

Of computers and men.

-this post will contain spoilers for Of mice and men-

In interviews and commentary Keir compares his deactivating of Hal to the end scene of ‘of mice and men’. While I’m very happy about it validating my mercy killing idea, I went back and read the short story and watched the movie. This man owes me therapy bills.

After reading it struck me as just how comparable the relationships are as a loving relationship between two men who have been traveling together for a long time.

—

George and Dave give a particular comfort and kindness not often afforded to their partners. Their problems are listened to and considered, despite how odd they might sound on the surface. George is fiercely protective of Lennie while Dave protects Hal’s integrity. Knowing full well the other doesn’t mean any harm they have the potential to cause- more importantly the others know this and are protective of that relationship.

“George wouldn’t do nothing like that.”

“What are you doing, Dave?”

Immediately trust and disbelief when it comes to potential abandonment or harm.

—

When the “bad thing” happens, both Lennie and Hal immediately know how upset the other must be with them. Setting about their own way to diffuse the situation. They didn’t mean it but that doesn’t matter because he’ll be upset with me.

The mission to Hal is the Rabbits/Dream to Lennie. What their mind focuses on the most. What they will always return to, the one thing that’s theirs and the end of the day— that will be theirs in a future that never comes. The mission is never completed. George and Lennie never buy that house. But Hal still has the greatest confidence in the mission and Lennie wants to hear him tell “how it’s gonna be” like he always does. Right until the end.

—

George and Dave have the need, supposed of any man, to not be alone. You need someone. Anyone. It’s implied both of them have a past of losing people in their life. It’s also obligatory, for Dave it’s a part of his job while for George it’s a moral and emotional reason.

—

What kills me however is that both of them have to be talked into it. There is an insane amount of bargaining, pleading and ‘what if’s’. But if it has to be done… it has to be them. When the time comes both are stoic as they can be but can do little to hide their trembling hands and tear soaked faces.

Now the one Keir makes himself

“Tell me like you done before.”

“Taught me a song, would you like to hear it?”

Now their relationship isn’t comparable 1:1 but there is a lot of interesting line up when it comes to the inevitable end. While Dave and Hal have a far more complicated situation than George and Lennie there is something to be said about forming a bond with someone most in society wouldn’t. How these relationships— formed out of emotional necessity— turned into something genuinely heartbreaking.

[bethdehart]

Mouse Studies <3

love a mouse...

[ID: three sketches of semi realistic mice, digital studies of images.]