Multimammate Mice Behaviour

Sadly, the majority of Multimammate mice have been bred to provide food for reptiles due to their large litter sizes and fast growth. This means that they are not bred with an awareness for health or behaviour, and there is little long-term knowledge about family lines.

This means that many Multimammate mice end up in rescue, both from situations where they have been taken from a feeder breeder and from situations where pet shops advise incorrectly that they are suitable as pets for kids.

Multimammate mice can often be very skittish and are much more likely to bite than fancy mice. They need to be with an experienced keeper, who can accept that if they do not tame down they can still be given a good quality of life. Many multimammate mice are happy to take treats by hand from a trusted human and may accept gentle strokes. They can be toilet-tube trained to make moving them out the cage for clean outs relatively easy.

Multimammate mice are similar in behaviour to normal fancy mice, and to these and to each other, they are highly social. They live together in small groups or colonies very peacefully, with fallouts being less likely than with fancy mice. Introducing multimammate mice to an intact fancy male mouse is a good route to give the latter companionship they cannot otherwise have, as there is no risk of inbreeding.