Rodent Roommates | Explorers in the Field

(soothing violin music)

[Woman] When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time outside. I would go on these adventures, either in the local park or even my front yard. And I spent a lot of time searching for four leaf clovers. Science starts with observation, being able to pay close attention, and ask questions. That's the spark of science.

(soothing orchestral music) Oh! Wait a minute, here's another one! (mumbles) (woman laughs) That's usually a good sign. I like to put traps where I see a lot of four leaf clovers.

I'm Danielle N. Lee. I'm a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and I study nuisance rodents. A nuisance or pest animal is any animal that gives people a problem. Rodents, like rats and mice, have been a problem for humans since the beginning of time. They can cause a lot of disease, so we wanna understand more about them so that we can live healthier, better lives.

I'm interested in studying nuisance rodents because I wanna understand how these animals successfully persist despite how hard people have tried to get rid of them for hundreds of years. So I study field mice across an urban to rural gradient. So that's looking from a big city, all the way to a farm area, to a more natural area where there's more forest and grasslands.

I'm trying to understand the behavioral differences of city mice and country mice. (mousetrap clicking) I like these small traps because they carry well in your bag. I open them up and they are ready to go. And then when I find the perfect place where I think mice may be, it's just as easy as that to set them. I come back just a couple hours later, and I can catch a mouse if they are out here.

(wooden fence creaks) This is the urban part of my gradient, here in the St. Louis metro area. Here surrounded by buildings, there are still a lot of places for wildlife, like nuisance rodents, to find a perfect place to live and make a living.

(playful music) (birds singing) (mumbles) Oh yeah. Smells like a mouse. Once we catch the mice safely, we removed him from the trap. He's swaddled like a baby.

All right. So we got another Peromyscus. Definitely a male. 14.5 grams. We weigh them. Measure different parts of their body, and then we individually identify them with a tag. This gives us a glimpse into how animal communities are using habitats in our area.

Understanding what makes city mouse and country mouse the same and different from one another is the goal of my research. And I'm interested in differences that might make them bolder and risk coming into your house as opposed to staying outside.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) I think understanding them better is how we do better at living around them. So I'll release her back to where she came from, and if I catch her again in the same place then I know that this is roughly where she's made a home.

I think it's important to do science close to home. It's so many questions that we still don't know, and so many answers that we've yet to find about the wildlife that lives right outside of our door. There are living laboratories all around us. And you can get started now.

There she goes, back home. (happy acoustic guitar music)