I have not seen cannibalism in rats, but we do not breed rats often where I work. Mice commonly eat their babies and I believe that it is primarily stress related. Our colony manager does not breed mothers who eat their young more than twice, because he feels that if they do it twice, there is a problem with the mother, assuming other breeding pairs in the same room are not doing this.

We had a terrible time in the breeding colonies when road construction outside the building was going on. There was a vibration and noise throughout the entire building and we had a noticable increase in cannibalism. Of course, we did not study this methodically. Another issue is in genetically modified strains. I notice that certain GM strains exhibit cannibalism more than other strains, but this is observational, and has not been studied methodically in our facility. It would be good for the big breeders to weigh in. One would think that they might have looked into this in order to minimize such problems.

In our mouse colonies this is sometimes an issue.  Although we have never studied the behavior, over the years we have gravitated (perhaps superstitiously) toward viewing cannibalism as a sign of and stemming from high levels of maternal stress.  The behavior seems to occur more frequently in new mothers, and more frequently when there are temporary problems with humidity regulation or other disturbances in the colony.  There is a some literature on maternal cannibalism in rodents, including attempts to intervene and reduced cannibalism following neonatal surgery by "gentling" the mothers (see Libbin & Person, 1979) or simply taking extreme care in closing and cleaning wounds (Helander & Bergh, 1980).  There are nonetheless many different potential reasons for cannibalism (see DeSantis & Schmaltz, 1984).

I have not seen cannibalism in rats, but we do not breed rats often where I work. Mice commonly eat their babies and I believe that it is primarily stress related. Our colony manager does not breed mothers who eat their young more than twice, because he feels that if they do it twice, there is a problem with the mother, assuming other breeding pairs in the same room are not doing this.

We had a terrible time in the breeding colonies when road construction outside the building was going on. There was a vibration and noise throughout the entire building and we had a noticable increase in cannibalism. Of course, we did not study this methodically. Another issue is in genetically modified strains. I notice that certain GM strains exhibit cannibalism more than other strains, but this is observational, and has not been studied methodically in our facility. It would be good for the big breeders to weigh in. One would think that they might have looked into this in order to minimize such problems.

First of all, it is important to assess whether we are dealing with infanticide or cannibalism, i.e. if the mother is killing and eating the pups or just consuming their bodies after they die from for any other reason. 

Thanks for you

Christopher Harshaw

Elizabeth Oseid

Nuno Henrique Franco

Rajesh Mandarapu

best regard

To my knowledge eating young is usually associated with stress.

It is generally best to minimise disturbance around parturition.

The rats who were bred first time, females sometime get panic by seeing their babies and confused as foreign body, so came under stress and show cannibalism. Sometimes if any body touch the pups, foreign smell will be there on the body of pups, and the mother will get confused and eat them.

Has anyone observed cannibalism/abandonment due to the male being removed shortly after litter delivery?

Hello Mudhir; In the rodent colony (rats and mice) at my college this problem developed under two conditions. 1. The male was left in the mother's cage. 2. The room temperature fell below 68 degrees F at night. By avoiding these two problems we infrequently have moms eating babies. Your other commentators have indicated a number of other possible problems. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers