A Scholarly Disquisition on "Three Blind Mice"

Three blind mice, three blind mice,/See how they run, see how they run, /They all ran after the farmer's wife,/ She cut off their tales with a carving knife, /Did you ever see such a sight in your life/ As three blind mice?

 --Nursery rhyme/song

This text provokes an astonishing number of questions.

First, how common is blindness among common field mice, genus Mus? Amazingly, rather scant data exists on this important question. And then, since the poem may be ultimately European in origin (as witnessed by a German version, Drei Blinden Mäuse¹), is blindness more common in the common European mouse genus Apodemus? One majorly flawed study of this question suggests that blindness may in fact be approximately 17% more common in the  European mouse.²

Second, why are three blind mice found in association? Is there an advantage to this behavior? Perhaps their pooled sensory capabilities (assuming they can be somehow shared) compensates, to a degree, for their visual deficit.

Next, why are they running? This seems quite inexplicable in an animal that cannot perceive any obstacles that may lie in its path. One would logically expect only slow, tentative exploratory behavior, using smell and/or the feeling capability of their whiskers.

Next, evidently they are chasing the farmer's wife.  Now, even everyday experience tells us that smaller creatures seldom chase larger ones. And a mouse, having an average weight of 118 grams, while an adult human male is presumed to weigh 70 kg (154 lb)³--with, of course, the average adult human female weighing somewhat less--results in a ratio, by weight, of human to mouse of approximately 593.2 to 1.

However, the literature does in fact yield eye-witness accounts of a mouse or mice chasing a human. The earliest of these is by Marco Polo in his Diary.⁴

Now, the matter that, as we are told, a farmer's wife cuts off their tails. What is the function of this caudalectomy? Is it pure animal cruelty? What reasons could the farmer's wife have for preferring that the mice (presumably found about her homestead and/or farm) be tailless?

Next, the reasons for her choice of implement: Why might a carving knife be the instrument of choice for de-tailing a mouse? And, still more puzzling, do the mice stand still for this operation? Would not the squeals of pain of the first mouse to suffer this surgery serve as an effective warning to the other two mice and cause them to get the hell out of there?

Finally, we are asked whether we have ever seen such a sight as three blind mice. However, I do not believe any of the major or recognized polling organizations have ever attempted to gather any data on how many people have in fact seen three blind mice.

1. Gesta Romanorum, III, iv.

2. Podgorny, A., Blindness in European vs. North American Mouse Species, J. A. A., 9. 427.

3. These figures are from JANAF, Some Weights of Common Creatures (New York, UN Fund for Useless Statistics, 1937).

4. Polo, M, Diario, Venice, 1368.

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