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Comment by syntaxing | Hacker News Reader

Honestly thought it was an exaggerated title but reading the article says otherwise. That’s a lot of mouse. Is it because the habitat is missing the right predators due to climate change?

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A mouse population spike happens every summer/autumn in the wheat belt during and after the harvest. I don't think this year's numbers have anything to do with predator populations, it's probably just warm weather and a good harvest.

Can't speak to that particular environment, but the explosion of lyme disease in Northeastern US over the past few decades or so. Lyme disease is passed by deer ticks which largely live off of mice, which have had decades of under-predation and good fortune as suburbanization creates miniature grasslands that are too disjointed to support the predators that should be eating them.

Another theory re: Lyme disease is that the reforestation of old farmlands supports a higher deer population. Deer (or other large hosts: bear, moose, etc) are an essential part of the deer tick lifecycle, which in turn supports the spread of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

New England has more forest area today than it has since the 1700s.

I have a coworker that recently moved from near Boston to southern Massachusetts. Absolutely boggles my mind the amount of wildlife he comes across. I thought the East coast was basically fully urbanized.

Living in MA, inside Rt 128 in a fairly urban city; there are foxes in my neighborhood nightly (as seen on my Ring doorbell), Deer and Coyotes in the woods. It's a pretty wild place for 5 miles outside a major east coast city.

In the metro area, we've also have bears and even a "moose on the loose":

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/05/16/bear-in-newton-massac...

https://www.boston.com/news/animals/2016/06/01/moose-on-the-...

Not to mention a mountain lion:

https://patch.com/massachusetts/winchester/winchester-mounta...

I don't know about elsewhere, but the deer population in Pennsylvania has become quite absurd.

You probably don't need a lot of mice with so many of the 4 foot tall rats known as white tailed deer running around.

Mice only came to Australia about two centuries ago. The ecology has been ruined by imported species.

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