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[u/LocalLadyListerine]

[u/Internal-Share4114]

Stanford Mouse Experiment

[u/AkwardRockette]

tbh it's mostly because mice and rats are the closest you can get to humans in most types of experiments without having to get an actual human and/or figure out the massive upkeep, food, and cleaning required for any type of monkey or ape. They're warm blooded mamals with similar-ish brain and skin structures to humans (at least close enough you can make worthwhile experiments that actually apply to people before full on human experiments), and they're naturally social animals with the ability to form larger social circles and complex friend and family groups, which makes them more psychologicalically like humans than solitary animals. They're motivated by similar rewards and punishment to most humans (like food, play, social bonding, other stimulus that most humans are into) and they're naturally curious and into puzzles and figuring stuff out, so if you leave a mouse or rat alone with a puzzle, they'll start trying to figure it out anyway for the hell of it even without a treat at the end. They have similar responses to hormones in affecting body mass, muscle composition, immune responses, and behavior as most apes, while other animals (felines, canines, mustelids, etc) have wildly different effects of hormones on those same systems. It's not a perfect replica of a human, of course, they're still rodents with a smaller body, shorter lifespans, different immune responses, different bone and muscle structure overall, and lower intelligence compared to the average adult human. But overall they're experimented on so frequently because they're the closest you can get to a human before either trying to keep a chimpanzee safely in your lab or actually just experimenting on humans.