Do mice like rice or cheese more?

Rats, commonly known as "mouse", are mammals that reproduce the fastest and have strong survival ability. Because of their destructiveness, rats are also one of the most hated animals. Otherwise, there would not be the saying "rats crossing the street, everyone shouts and beats them". Since ancient times, rats have been stealing food, which is obvious to everyone.

However, in the cartoons we see, mice seem to like cheese very much. Why is that? Do the mice we see stealing food because we don’t have cheese? If mice don’t like cheese, why do cartoons set mice as cheese lovers? Today, let’s talk about mice and cheese.

01. Do mice like cheese?

So do mice like cheese? In 2006, there was an issue about mice and cheese, in which researcher David Holmes introduced a study he conducted on whether mice like cheese.

The results showed that if mice were given all the food they wanted, they preferred cereals, dried fruits and the like rather than cheese.

Of course, as an omnivore, mice have a very diverse diet, and it is even difficult to find a fixed food that they like. They eat grains, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.

02. Why do mice like cheese in animation?

In fact, the history of descriptions of mice eating cheese is very old. There were similar descriptions even before Shakespeare, but the ones we see now are mainly in the United States.

Mice love cheese for two reasons, from an animation perspective.

1. Cheese easily leaves marks

As an artificial food, cheese is not like natural foods, such as cereals, which are not easy to leave marks because they are swallowed directly.

Cheese is larger and is more likely to leave traces of being bitten by mice. Therefore, people think that cheese attracts mice. In addition, grains and other things are larger in quantity and are generally not easy to count. Cheese is artificially produced and easy to count, which makes it easier to observe and find.

2. Cheese is more intuitive as an animation

The image of cheese is easily recognizable, and with a hole in the middle and a mouse’s face sticking out of the hole, this image has a more obvious impact and is more suitable for animation.

In fact, the animated image of cheese also reflects the influence of animation, a Western feature, and everyone just adopted it.

Similarly, many people who want to lose weight like to eat beef. Why? Because many weight loss programs are directly translated from the United States. The United States recommends eating beef for weight loss, so we also follow suit and eat beef.

In fact, as a red meat, beef is not that special in terms of energy.

At this point, do you feel like you have suddenly realized something? It turns out that we are influenced by Western culture. In fact, mice still prefer rice to cheese!