Of mice and men

Natural History, June, 2002 by Jeff Laite

In "A Mouse's Tale" (4/02), Steven N. Austad writes: "It is more than a simple oddity that laboratory mice have smaller eyes and brains ... larger bodies ... weaker muscles and chromosomes, and longer telomeres than their wild relatives."

Indeed, it is not the least bit odd. As a result of spending the past fifteen years in warrens of office cubicles (not entirely unlike cheese mazes), I can attest that my eyes are smaller, my muscles weaker, my body larger. I should not be surprised to learn that my brain and telomeres had atrophied. Did the mice also go bald, by any chance?

Jeff Laite
Brooklyn, New York