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I'm a little ashamed to admit that you had me googling for that. ;)

Seriously though, the idea that mice might have a placebo effect is fascinating. I would have thought that the placebo effect would require some high-level form of self-awareness (which perhaps mice do have, I don't really know) and an understanding of at least the purpose of medicine. Maybe not though...

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Mice are the most intelligent species on Earth. In fact, they are so smart that they are immune to placebo effects. However, they act like they aren't because our reactions provide them much entertainment - http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Mice

Edited to add: On a more serious note, I don't know if mice are susceptible to a Hawthorne-like effect http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/def_hawthorn.htm Even physical science researchers have to deal with observer effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29

Edited to clean up brain-drained errors.

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