Muricide

That Tabby their feathers had frighten’d, / Amusing her jaws with the carnage of mice— / But lately her habits had grown very nice, / And her taste much more enlighten’d. / Could that delicate skin harbour murder within? / Those eyes so mildly winking, / Could they gaze on the pangs of the quiet and meek? / Could that soft velvet head, so pacific and sleek, / On muricide deeds be thinking?

This district […] supports a local mouse-god; […] consequently not only is muricide a penal offence but anything which affects the lives and fortunes of these engaging little rodents cannot fail to be of deep concern.

Hyperemotionality of the latter rats included not only hyperreactivity similar to that observed in the septal rat but also a muricide of 90% in incidence, which is similar to rats with olfactory bulb ablations.

The experimental models used included isolation and shock-induced conspecific aggression, muricide (mouse-killing), and ranicide (frog-killing).

The mechanism of muricide behavior probably involves a discrete area of the brain, the amygdala.

McIntyre (personal communication) found no change in the mouse-killing patterns of rats post-kindling, and a more extensive study by Bawden and Racine found no changes in muricide, ranicide or intraspecific aggression of their post-kindled rats.

The review covers both offensive and defensive aggression in a variety of animal models including muricide (mouse killing), ranicide (frog killing), isolation-induced, pain-induced, brain stimulation-induced, and intermale aggression.

This was generally supported by Banerjee (1974) who found that two injections of 200 ng 6-OHDA intraventricularly failed to reduce muricide in rats […]