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rebeccmeisterYesterday while talking with the student group that is tasked with studying foraging behavior, I was suddenly reminded of this old book:
The description in the jacket cover is great:
In 1951, grain destroyed by house mice in strategic food stocks led the Rodent Research Section of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to receive into its Civil-Service embrace an Australian zoologist, Peter Crowcroft.
In his mouse watching station, Dr. Crowcroft observed the mice dealing with the situations that he had engineered. We see mice as explorers, and as gourmets in a world of abundance. As Dr. Crowcroft says: 'You can give a mouse fear but you cannot give it friendship. If you want to learn its ways, it must not know that you are watching.'
The first time I read this was when a grad student in my undergrad research lab handed me an old, mimeographed copy. I had a more recent memory of obtaining a hard copy of the book, thanks toscrottie, but couldn't find it at home anywhere last night. This morning I figured out that was because I had brought it in to my office. Thank goodness, because copies are now much more expensive than when S bought this copy.
The thing that doesn't improve with age is my smart-o-phone, which never fails to remind me that it is a terrible device for taking photographs. Fairly soon I am going to be forced to upgrade it because it is a 3G device, and as best I understand it, my cell-o-phone service provider is discontinuing 3G.
It is tempting to go back to having a land line.
The description in the jacket cover is great:
In 1951, grain destroyed by house mice in strategic food stocks led the Rodent Research Section of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to receive into its Civil-Service embrace an Australian zoologist, Peter Crowcroft.
In his mouse watching station, Dr. Crowcroft observed the mice dealing with the situations that he had engineered. We see mice as explorers, and as gourmets in a world of abundance. As Dr. Crowcroft says: 'You can give a mouse fear but you cannot give it friendship. If you want to learn its ways, it must not know that you are watching.'
The first time I read this was when a grad student in my undergrad research lab handed me an old, mimeographed copy. I had a more recent memory of obtaining a hard copy of the book, thanks to
scrottie, but couldn't find it at home anywhere last night. This morning I figured out that was because I had brought it in to my office. Thank goodness, because copies are now much more expensive than when S bought this copy.The thing that doesn't improve with age is my smart-o-phone, which never fails to remind me that it is a terrible device for taking photographs. Fairly soon I am going to be forced to upgrade it because it is a 3G device, and as best I understand it, my cell-o-phone service provider is discontinuing 3G.
It is tempting to go back to having a land line.
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Date: 2020-09-15 03:18 pm (UTC)