Mice Love Cheese More Than Any Other Food

Mice are not especially keen on cheese, and given a choice they go for grains, seeds, and sugary foods first. Researchers and pest-control experts say strong-smelling cheese is at best a so-so bait, and mice will usually pick peanut butter, chocolate, or cereal over a lump of cheddar every time. In the wild their diet is mostly seeds, grains, and fruit, because that is what is lying around farms and fields. The cheese association seems to be a cultural hangover from medieval Europe, where cheese was stored unrefrigerated in larders and would have been one of the more accessible, gnaw-able targets, plus the visual gag is just funny. So the cartoon is wrong twice over: cheese is not a mouse's favourite, and a clever mouse would rather you baited the trap with peanut butter, which, awkwardly, also works better.