Sophont
Monday, September 06, 2004
world's oldest mouse
UMHS Press Release: "UPDATE: On April 22, Yoda died peacefully in his cage at the U-M Medical School. He was four years and 12 days old.
ANN ARBOR, MI -Yoda, the world's oldest mouse, celebrated his fourth birthday on Saturday, April 10, 2004 . A dwarf mouse, Yoda lives in quiet seclusion with his cage mate, Princess Leia, in a pathogen-free rest home for geriatric mice belonging to Richard A. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pathology in the Geriatrics Center of the University of Michigan Medical School.
Yoda sniffing his cage mate, Princess Leia. Dwarf mice always are housed with larger females to provide body warmth needed to protect smaller dwarf mice from freezing to death.
Photo credit: Richard Miller, U-M Medical School
Yoda was born on April 10, 2000 at the U-M Medical School . At 1,462-days-old, Yoda is now the equivalent of about 136 in human-years. The life span of the average laboratory mouse is slightly over two years."
“Yoda is only the second mouse I know to have made it to his fourth birthday without the rigors of a severe calorie-restricted diet,” Miller says. “He's the oldest mouse we've seen in 14 years of research on aged mice at U-M. The previous record-holder in our colony died nine days short of his fourth birthday. 100-year-old people are much more common than four-year-old mice.”
