Introduction:

            Prey animals live a perilous life in which they are constantly estimating the risk of foraging and obtaining a mate against becoming a predator’s meal.  Small rodents have evolved many strategies in which they are better able to discern danger of a certain time or area.  Based on these environmental cues, they choose the most appropriate behavior to minimize mortality.  Rodents display a variety of avoidance tactics as well as the traditional freeze or flight scenarios, which will be looked at in the current study.  A closer look in to the relationship of predator avoidance can be useful in order to better understand how animals survive, remain fit, and keep a healthy population number despite a heavy density of predators (Eilam et al. 1999). 

                 Evolution has acted upon the behavior of rodents to give them advantages to elude their predators and better the fitness of the population as a whole.  Some mice studies show that although many rodents proceed with common ancestral behaviors some have evolved behaviors based on their species’ ecology to better suit their needs and waste less energy, as they do not always respond to owl calls.  Nevertheless, very complicated interactions are being discovered and shedding interesting light on how predation and avoidance influence ecological processes.  Although an older study subject, much is still being learned and new discoveries are being made that can be used in not only comparative studies, but also population management (Lime 2002).

            For this experiment, the hypothesis is that the white mice will have no change of behavior to the owl calls.  The wild mice should either freeze or run at the sound of the owl, but not the other sounds.  In addition, the mice should avoid the leaves during the study as it is noise and as prey, they would want to be as silent as possible.