‘Welsh Tidy Mouse’ might have been cleaning British man’s shed for ‘fun’, say scientists

The video of a mouse secretly cleaning up a British man’s shed has left people amused and curious. The footage of the rodent nicknamed “Welsh Tidy Mouse” gathering up objects in a shed and placing them neatly inside a box every night, recently went viral sparking curiosity, and scientists may have an explanation for this so-called “mousekeeping”.

Tale of the house-proud mouse

Retired postman and avid wildlife photographer Rodney Holbrook set up a night-vision camera after his shed was being mysteriously cleaned night after night for months only to find an unexpected helper scurrying around his workbench.

Holbrook, who lives in Builth Wells, a small town in central Wales recorded a mouse he nicknamed “Welsh Tidy Mouse” gathering clothes, nuts, bolts and other small items and placing them in a box on his workbench.

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Holbrook also tested the mouse by keeping out different objects to check if it could pick them. However, the creature continued and even carried cable ties to the box.

Tidying up just for 'fun'

While the mice tidying up someone else’s shed seems peculiar, many animals engage in what we may consider “cleaning” behaviour. For example, it is said that ants and bees remove corpses from their ant hills and hives.

However the case of “Welsh Tidy Mouse” is more complicated. It is known that mice frequently groom themselves and even create and keep a separate space as a toilet in their cages.

“I wouldn’t say that this mouse has looked at its environment and thought: ‘Hey, this is messy. I need to tidy it up,’” said University of Bristol’s Dr Megan Jackson, who studies foraging behaviour in laboratory mice, as quoted by The Guardian.

Jackson went on to say how the mice in her lab seem to enjoy foraging for foraging’s sake. “It is really intrinsic to a mouse to want to go out into the world, pick things up and drag them back to a place that they perceive to be a good place to store things.”

The scientist at the University of Bristol noted that whatever the Welsh Tidy Mouse’s motivation may be, the rodent did seem to find the task fun.

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“This isn’t a behaviour that’s necessary for survival, but they are still doing it night and after night, even though they have probably learned that (Holbrook) is putting the stuff back the very next day,” said Jackson, as per the British media report.

She added, “The fact this mouse is engaging in a pointless behaviour must mean that he finds it rewarding in some way.”

The researcher also noted that while as humans we get to enjoy different aspects of life it maynot be the case for most animals so it's "quite nice to see a mouse engaging in behaviour that isn’t completely necessary."

Notably, this isn’t the first time that Holbrook has encountered a house-proud mouse, he told BBC. In 2019, he installed a night-vision camera for a friend which revealed another mouse keeping his friend’s shed organised.

(With inputs from agencies)