- Footage from a Shanghai laboratory shows a technician accidentally releasing mice
A sneaky lab mouse at a facility in China managed to escape a technician by climbing onto the back of her hazmat suit and holding on for ten minutes as she desperately searched for it.
CCTV footage from a Shanghai laboratory shows the lab worker taking rodents out of their cages to weigh them, while three of them jump out and escape.
Lab technician Tian Yongyi frantically searches for the mouse, even lying on the floor to look under cabinets as the clever rodent clings to her and clambers over her back without her noticing.
The white mouse managed to avoid capture for more than ten minutes before the lab worker finally realized the mouse was on her shoulder.
Chinese animal testing facilities have come under scrutiny since allegations were first made that a ‘laboratory leak’ in Wuhan was behind the Covid-19 outbreak.
The lab worker, who was wearing a mask and hazmat suit, apparently cannot see the rodent even as it clings to her front
Laboratory technician Tian Yongyi frantically searches for the mouse, even lying on the floor to look under cabinets
According to reports, the rodent evaded capture for ten minutes by clinging to the lab technician’s suit
Experts have said allegations about the virus’s emergence in late December 2019 remain unproven, although they are still being looked into, including by US congressional investigators.
It is not clear what the mice at the Shanghai facility seen in the images were used for and there is no indication that there were any health and safety risks.
Hilarious footage of the incident shows the lab worker panicking after the mice she was moving escaped the box and climbed over her.
Wearing a mask and a blue hazmat suit, she apparently cannot see the rodent even as it clings to her front.
In the background you can see one of her colleagues getting to work as she frantically searches for the mouse
She works quickly to capture any rodents she has freed, searching vigilantly until she tracks down the one that has eluded her.
It comes after it emerged this week that Chinese scientists have experimented with a mutated coronavirus strain that is 100 per cent lethal in mice – despite concerns such research could trigger a new pandemic.
The technician doesn’t realize the mouse is on her back as she squats on the floor to check it under a shelf
In the background you can see one of her colleagues getting to work as she frantically searches for the mouse
Scientists in Beijing – linked to the Chinese military – have cloned a Covid-like virus found in pangolins, known as GX_P2V, and used to infect mice.
The mice were ‘humanized’, meaning they were designed to express a protein found in humans, with the aim of assessing how the virus might react in humans.
Each rodent infected with the pathogen died within eight days, which the researchers called “surprisingly” quickly.
Scientists in Beijing – linked to the Chinese military – have cloned a Covid-like virus found in pangolins, known as GX_P2V, and used to infect mice
The team was also surprised to find high levels of viral loads in the mice’s brains and eyes. This suggests that the virus, despite being related to Covid, replicates and spreads through the body in a unique way.
In a scientific paper not yet published, they warned that the finding “underlines a spillover risk from GX_P2V to humans.”
Mice are the animals most commonly used in biomedical research around the world.
China released its first national standards for the treatment of laboratory animals in 2016.