What is a mouse?…ask this question and I am sure that many will refer to the computer mouse. Today for a common man, whatever resembles a real mouse is a small rat and if it is a little bigger it is a rat The fact is that even taxonomists find it difficult to differentiate between the genus rattus and the genus mus just by its morphology; the reason being that both are from the same family of muroid / muridae which is very large and complex. (1)
The situation is worse if your workplace is inhabited by rats. A colleague of mine called upon the admin facility and told them that there is a mouse on her desk for which the janitor darted back saying that if there is an extra mouse, call the computer stores department. Disgusted by this response, she called upon the receptionist and told the situation; the receptionist added a bit of humor to the response claiming that there is a mouse in every other desk-space in the office. Hearing this, the real cause of confusion dawned and my colleague corrected the ‘mouse’ with a ‘rat’…
We have been using the word mouse over and over again in the computer’s context that the real ‘mouse’ has lost its real meaning. This is not only for ‘mouse’…we have been using certain phrases or doing certain actions so many times that the real part of the word/action has lost its purpose.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat
Hehehe....now I know who u were referring to:)
ReplyDeleteThis link also helps: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_tell_a_rat_from_a_mouse
Observing the tail is a difficult task and every-time you cannot go about checking the number of nipple-pairs the rat/mice species has... :)
ReplyDeleteSo it is better to say it as a rat to avoid ambiguity...
Read this http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatsMice.htm for some really unknown facts about these murids