Mice wheel-y do love running! Wild rodents enjoy using exercise wheels just as much as caged pets. Scientists from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands filmed wild mice using an ...

Why mice and other animals will voluntarily run on wheels isn’t yet known. But then again, I find it a bit of a mystery why humans will happily run on a treadmill and eschew the beautiful world ...

In analyzing more than 12,000 videos of mice in the cages, the researchers saw that the feral mice did, indeed, hit the running wheel of their own accord. The mice “were seen to leave the wheel and ...

Wheel running occurred year-round; the mice were typically juvenile. The mice spent between one and 18 minutes on the wheel. The animals got on the wheel, got off, and within minutes got back on ...

Over time, the pellets were removed from the experiment, and the free-range mice continued to hit up the wheel, though less frequently. For three years, Meijer (along with her colleagues ...

Up through early adulthood (12 weeks old), the mice chose to run regularly on the wheel. Then some of the mice were placed in cages without running wheels for the next nine weeks.

Wheel running in the wild. For pet and lab mice, running wheels are a common feature, often used to encourage exercise. However, some scientists have argued that mice only run on these wheels ...

More staff quit, most without explanation, but others complained that the mice only seemed to be running on their wheels, or taking small sips from the steel straws of their water bottles. “The ...

More information: Zoe Thompson et al, Effects of food restriction on voluntary wheel-running behavior and body mass in selectively bred High Runner lines of mice, Physiology & Behavior (2024). DOI ...