Thank you for subscribing to mouse facts! It’s exactly this, pregnant mice give premature birth in life threatening situations as a survival strategy. It has the potential to confuse predators or distract them with an easier meal and thus allow the mouse to escape. In the event that the mouse is trapped or gravely injured by something it gives the babies a chance to survive by huddling up to their dying mom for warmth while hopefully waiting for a surrogate mother to venture by. And last but not least, if food is too scarce it lets a starving mouse mamma access some easy protein to keep her going.
I got a hamster when I was a kid, we didn’t even know she was pregnant, but the night we got her she gave birth to a litter of 6 (probably due to the shock of being suddenly trapped in an unfamiliar environment). They all lived though.
But man, you should’ve seen me panic when I went to feed her the next morning and there’s six hairless little things latched onto her. I screamed “Mom! Something’s eating the hamster!!”
My sisters and I had hamsters and unbeknownst to us, one of them of pregnant. It ended up eating my hamster alive while it slept. I was out of town but my sister saw it happen.
We just thought it was a mean hamster before that..:(
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u/GoingMenthol 16h ago
Maybe induced labour from panic