Letters to the Editor

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Scientists create rodents that are more active, more aggressive, and live longer than ordinary mice. Exterminators are unhappy.
  • but are they more fit for survival?

    These critters are probably just the ticket if you're planning to hold the first annual Mous-O-lympics, but how do they fare in the wild?

    Unless their chance of death by hazard is substantially reduced, there's not much use for their longevity. How well do their muscles develop on a meager diet of human food scraps? How's their immune system? Since they're not genetically diverse, better hope they're not carrying any genetic defects. And so on.

    I'll believe that these are the bane of exterminators when they've been pitted against the mice that have co-evolved with humans. Until then, my working assumption is that the ones that do survive a few generations will begin to seem more and more like their peers.