SINGING MOUSE

Dear Mr. Downes,
I was re-reading "The Singing Mouse of Devonport" in Fortean Studies Vol. 3 last night and was reminded of an article I recently ran across in an online newspaper archive although it seems to be quoting a letter to Nature about a singing mouse in 1870s France. Just in case you haven't already got this in your files, here it is.

Portsmouth Times 12-15-1877 p. 1 Portsmouth, Ohio

Singing Mice.

The subject of singing mice is receiving considerable attention among the subscribers to Nature, and letters describing the musical habits of these little creatures are contributed by various observers. One, writing from Menton, France, says: “Last winter we occupied the rooms we now do at Menton. Early in February we heard, as we thought, the song of a canary, and fancied it was outside our balcony; however, we soon discovered that the singer was in our salon, and that the songster was a mouse. At that time the weather was rather cold, and we had a little fire, and the mouse spent most of the day under the fender, where we kept it supplied with bits of biscuit. In a few days it became quite tame, and would come on the hearth in an evening and sing for several hours. Sometimes it would climb up the chiffonier and ascend a vase of flowers to drink at the water, and then sit and sing on the edge of the table, and allow us to go quite near to it without ceasing its warble. One of its favourite haunts was the wood-basket, and it would often sit and sing on the edge of it. On February 12th, the last night of the carnival, we had a number of friends in our salon, and the little mouse sang most vigorously, much to their delight and astonishment, and was not in the least disturbed by their talking. In the evening the mouse would often run about the room and under the door, and into the corridor and adjoining rooms, and then return to its own hearth. After amusing us for nearly a month, it disappeared, and we suspect that it was caught in a trap set in one of the rooms beyond. The mouse was small and had very large ears, which it moved about much while singing. The song was not unlike that of the canary in many of its trills, and it sang quite as beautifully as any canary; but it had more variety, and some of its notes were much lower, like those of the bullfinch. One great peculiarity was a sort of double song which we had now and then, an air with an accompaniment; the air was loud and full, the notes being low and, the accompaniment quite subdued.”

Best,
Chris Woodyard

JAPANESE SINGING MOUSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLu37VvCozw

STEVE JONES: Singing Mice

It is always a pleasure to welcome a new blogger, and a double pleasure when the aforesaid new blogger is an old friend. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Steve Jones. Not the Sex Pistols guitar hero, but the Yorkshire JP and witch, who I take pleasure in introducing to people as "my mate the Pagan Magistrate"....

I have just got around to finishing reading last years CFZ yearbook (In my defence, I have a pile of stuff to read!). I finished reading Jon's article on singing mice and thought I would turn to the trusty Google to see what else I could turn up. Cue lots of sites featuring an animation of a mouse singing "You Sexy thing" to a lump of cheese!

However, it did turn up a copy of the article in Time in 1936 on a singing mouse already mentioned by Jon in his article. More interestingly, however, I found this article from 2005, which I don't recall having come across before:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/01/research.highereducation

Not only have scientists found out that male mice do sing, but that it is a sexual response. I note that Jon's researches on the subject mentioned mainly male mice. The site has two mp3 recordings of singing mice for you all to listen too as well! It would seem, though, that as the mice are usually chirping ultra-sonically and thus beyond the normal human hearing range, the ones that became showbiz stars must have been the equivalent of mice Basso Profundo's!
I now have a mental image of a mice opera in my head!

Here is a link to the paper on singing male mice:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030386
It turns out that there is a lot of stuff on the net about singing mice. Here is a document on their distribution and song affected by climate:
http://www.zoology.ufl.edu/courses/ip/2009Spring/Stmary/password/SX%205.doc