Keeping mice alone
Whether an animal wants to live in a group or alone is innate as other typical characteristics are, too. That implies that also the need of social contact is innate and it is essential for the animal's mental health!
Most of mice species live a distinct, active and variegated social life they lead in couples, small or larger groups in the wild. What kind of social life the species you keep needs you can find out when you have a look at their wild relatives. But try to find out whether there have been any changes in social behavior caused by breeding as it happened with the Mongolian gerbil before you buy your mice.
Contact between animals of the same species is irreplacable for social rodents because only their conspecifics have the same ways to communicate and to behave. Humans never could replace this contact! First of all, they are simply too big. And they behave and communicate in a completely different way. That's why mice and humans usually can't understand each other and the need of contact of the mouse remains unsatisfied.
The basic problem for each lonely social animal is the loss of (the right!) stimuli in their „empty“ environment. Stimuli the mouse is genetically programmed for are missing. But these stimuli are as important as food, water and sleep to them. And the genetical program determins which kind of stimuli they need for mental health and to what extent they need them. These stimuli are missing completely if you keep your mouse alone, so you can assume that every lonely mouse is mentally ill!
Translation
Angelus Noctis
Proofreading
Jedediah
