I'm not a mouse. What do I give a fuck?
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
225 points (84.4% liked)
science
21247 readers
341 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Gotta love all the people suddenly realizing that vivisection is worthless... thinking that meat is natural for humans but not mice.... wew.
mice were fed three types of red meat – pork, beef and mutton
I assume most mice don't regularly eat large livestock.
Are mice evolved to eat red meat? The article doesn't really say.
However, there were limitations to the study. As well as it being a mice model [...]
Yes, mice eat red meat.
Mice are omnivores and are opportunistic eaters. They’ll eat whatever they can find.
Mice do not eat that much meat of other mammals.
Giving an over abundance of it, for a long time, will shock the mouse.
Humans historically, also didn't eat much meat up until very recently. More recent research suggests our ancient human ancestors were eating far more plants than meat
EDIT: For example:
Here we present the isotopic evidence of pronounced plant reliance among Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers from North Africa (15,000–13,000 cal BP), predating the advent of agriculture by several millennia
This is just not true in the bigger picture of human evolution. That paper focuses on humans in North Africa 15,000–13,000 years ago which is a very tiny snapshot in time and geography.
Eating meat is a major part of what separated archaic humans from other primates; it is theorized that the calories from meat is part of what helped us grow our larger brains. Homo Habilis was eating meat 2.6 million years ago, well before Homo Sapiens even existed. Homo Erectus hunted to the point of wiping out many large herbivores over a 1.5 million year time period. They are meat regularly enough for tapeworms to speciate specifically for us as hosts.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Primates in general are designed to eat red meat. Chimps, our closest cousin, go on regular hunts against other primates, and eat them
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
In the animal study, mice were fed three types of red meat – pork, beef and mutton – every day for two weeks. Then, the researchers triggered colitis (a model for IBD) using a chemical called dextran sulfate sodium (DSS).
They definitely aren't evolved to eat dextran sulfate sodium.
Was the first thing I thought of. “Standard diets,” vs non-standard pretty quickly calls into question how much we need to account for the divergence from typical. If I go to India (I’m from the USA), there will be meals that aren’t standard for me that might cause distress that are nonetheless fine for the local population.
load more comments
(17 replies)
Look I'm all for the idea that we eat too much meat currently and all, but are mice really good analogs for humans in this instance? I'm not a scientist of any sort, so I really don't know, but it seems to me like a creature that doesn't naturally eat, like, any red meat would be a bad analog here.
Humans also don't generally eat poison. But the mice in this study were poisoned with DSS after eating meat. Maybe meat is not the real culprit here...
I mean alcohol is poison, we have consumed that substance for longer than we(globally) have been eating tomatoes, potatoes, coffee and refined sugar.
Multiple cultures around the world have independently invented some form of alcohol
And other species also routinely ingests poison for pleasure.
Dolphins getting high on pufferfish toxins, Elephants getting absolutely shit faced on fermented fruits such as amarula
Honey I don't know bout you but it's Friday night this human is absolutely gonna be enjoying some poison!
load more comments
(1 replies)
That's it! Uninviting all the mice from the next BBQ.
They do terrible, terrible things to the guest bathroom
load more comments
(1 replies)
That's fine, we already know how to cure any disease in mice.
Yeah that cure works for humans too. Far more cost effective. Just ask any insurance company, fascist, etc.
Where's that old Twitter bot that would append in mice to reports of these bullshit studies?
load more comments
(2 replies)