I know...seems crazy, huh? Still, though, his statement doesn't say she wasn't sexually assaulted - he only says they never had a romantic affair. For some reason, I keep thinking it was over a colony of mice/pregnant mice and how dirty their habitat was. If it was very dirty, the ammonia would be off the hook I would think, and make them more prone to disease and or death, etc. ... especially when being "test" mice / engineered mice.
Extremely dirty cages become very humid inside, the bedding gets wet and the food molds. It is not a pretty sight.
Pups (baby mice) will die of hypothermia if the cage floods. If a cage is without food or water for too long, mice will cannibilize any pups in the cage.
Mice will sometimes fight, especially the males and they can wound each other very badly.
If you do not wean a litter at the correct time, within a week or two all the females will be pregnant. If you are really negligent, you could end up with a LOT of mice in one cage.
Husbandry SOP is 5 adult mice per cage, or one mating pair plus litter per cage. If you do harem mating, you have to take the pregnant females out of the cage before they give birth, because you can't have multiple litters in one cage.
It is sometimes very difficult for the animal techs, because ultimately they are responsible for the mice in the room, but the mice belong to the PI, not the technician, so there can be some tension there.
Good technicians really do have a hard time if students and techs are sloppy in the room. Alternately, it can be maddening to a PI to be assigned a careless animal tech.
I would suspect it was not a regular cage or a food/water issue because he would be responsible for that. It was more likley something to do with specially flagged cages or overcrowding since she would be responsible for that. Animal techs are not expected to do any weaning, that's the responsibility of the lab.
