Infestation?

I have just learned today that my cuisin has a possible mice infestation in his apartment. The apartment is old and has cheap rent but in todays society we need the cheapest of everything we can find as its getting harder and harder to make a living. Apparently the maintanence guy at the apartment says they deal with this every winter but never try to fix the problem so you know right away its not a great place to be. Theres enough mice that they can be heard in the walls and there are feces from what I have heard just about everywhere. I believe a health inspecter will be coming to examine the building and with the way it sounds this apartment building might be closed down from this. Although I realize it is prety imposible to live somewhere with an infestation I still am too against killing to agree with the slaughter of all these mice just trying to find a place to stay warm for the winter months. Rats and mice usually dont go into homes unless they are homes not taken care of or a food source is constantly being left out. So in the end, it is the humans fault for this. The landlord/maintanence personal for letting the building go and people being unclean. So once again because of humans all these mice will be slaughtered. A huge peeve with me is how people believe mice and rats are so toxic. My grandma for example although a nice lady really judges them and believes anything about them that she hears. That they ALL have diseases and they will attack you. No, you on average statistically speaking have more of a change of a stray cat biting you and you becoming infected. Cats mouths are proven to be dirtier then mice or rats. I just wish we xould all get past this judgeing and find a way to get the rats/mice to leave your home without turning to murder. After all, remember.. when you feel like killing these animals they are only trying to do what we do everyday, survive.

Study at Chicago University Proves Just How Much Rats Care

Rats are synonymous with double-crossing and cheating in love, but they may not really be such rotters. According to researchers, they are actually kind and generous.

Chicago University scientists housed rats in pairs so that they got to know each other.
They then placed one in a transparent tube inside the cage, and found that the second rat was distressed until it worked out how to free the first one. To their astonishment, not only did the creatures help cage-mates in distress, they also selflessly shared their treats with them.

Perhaps less surprisingly, the female rats seemed to be more caring than the males. During the experiment, scientists found that the roaming rat became agitated the sight of its trapped friend, meaning it had picked up on the animal's distress, and, according to the scientists, showing the simplest form of empathy. But the free animal went much further, learning how to open the tube door, without  being shown, and freeing its cage-mate. This said the researchers, meant the animal was 'putting itself in the other's shoes' – a much more complex form of empathy. Rats were shown to become agitated when they saw another rodent trapped, researchers say this means they have a simple form of empathy
Numerous rats repeated the pattern, the journal Science reports.
Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal said: 'We are not training these rats in any way.   These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal. 'We are not showing them how to open the door.  It's hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying and eventually it works.'
In further experiments, the rats had little or no interest in releasing stuffed toys trapped in the tube but they freed real rats even when no allowed to play with them afterwards. This, say the researchers, shows that the liberator rats' motivation was to ease the distress of the trapped animals.

A rat pack: In a final experiment scientists tested if a rat would choose chocolate over mounting a rescue, the animal frequently chose the rescue

The final experiment looked at where a rat's sympathies would lie when given the choice of mounting a rescue or eating some chocolate, a favoured treat.
The animal frequently chose to complete the rescue before tucking in and sharing their chocolate stash with their companion. Peggy Mason said: 'That was very compelling. It said to us that essentially helping their cage-mate is on par with chocolate. We were shocked.' The results also hinted at the female rats being more likely to mount rescue attempts, perhaps reflecting the importance of empathy in motherhood.
The research team said that acting out of empathy is clearly not unique to humans – and suggested we might be able to learn a thing or two from the humble rat. Professor Mason said: 'When we act without empathy, we are acting against our biological inheritance. 'If humans would listen and act on their biological inheritance more often, we' d be better off.'

Taken from this website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071722/Rats-wrongly-maligned-actually-kind-hearted-generous-creatures.html