# Wanted: Mouse straight jacket!!



## thanatos696 (Sep 11, 2010)

So here is the situation:

I have a trio in a 10 gal tank. 1 buck and 2 does. The tank has several hides that are stacked to provide more floor space, and it also has a wheel for exercise.

All of the mice get along just fine, but for the last 3 days the male has been acting very strangely. 
He has taken to a pattern of running the top of one of the hides in very small circles and with out fail pausing to stick his nose over each edge of the hide, when he gets to the edges of the hide that are against the tank he is bashing his head into the glass. He is running top speed and does not stop except for the occasional drink or munchie break. The hide is a 6x6" hide box and he is making laps around this at least once per second, putting him at a minimum of 2 feet of travel per second. Yesterday he kept this same behavior up for over 12 straight hours..

I have moved him to a new tank on his own today and he didn't even bother to explore his new tank, he immediately went back to his pattern of running circles and over the last few hours has started adding quirks to his circles, where he is picking seemingly random places to pause and turn his head as he was doing with the hide box in the previous tank.

Its not like he doesn't have anything else for exercise or doesn't get attention..
This is the second time in the past 4 years or so that I have had a mouse that acted like this. The first was a doe, and I just removed her and fed her off rather than take any chances. (Mostly for lack of a good forum to ask..)

Has anyone seen this before? Is this some form of brain damage? A sugar imbalance? Possibly something that is genetic? 
I ask, because I am fairly certain that his 2 does are both preggers and if it could be genetic, I will just feed the little ones off rather than risk something genetic in my breeding pool.


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## Rhasputin (Feb 21, 2010)

Sounds like waltzing. Very bad.
Could be a brain problem, or inner ear problem.

Could also be an extremely bad case of OCD.


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## thanatos696 (Sep 11, 2010)

Yep. Caught a video of it and it looks just about the same. Everything that I am seeing on waltzing says that there is a good chance that it is genetic. 
Kind of a bummer, but at least it wasn't one of my stripes or one from that line..


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I had a boy a couple of years ago who ran in circles around the perimeter of his tank almost all the time. He stopped to eat and drink and sleep, and I figured as long as he wasn't hurting himself or other meeces, he'd be OK. I didn't breed him, though.


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