The mouse diet is quite diverse but a question that comes up quite often is: Do mice eat spiders? The simple answer is: Yes.
Some household pets can help control your spider population. Cats, hedgehogs, frogs, lizards, and birds are all good examples.
Mouse spiders, Missulena sp., vary from 10 mm - 35 mm body length and all have distinctively bulbous head and jaw regions. They are often confused with funnel-web spiders.
The house mouse has adapted to urban living and has evolved to eat just about anything. They even look for food scraps in the garbage. House mice are not above chewing through bags and other containers to get to food. Still, house mice typically favor eating insects and seeds.
While they may not be apex predators, mice are known to hunt and consume a wide variety of insects. While proteins are not a primary staple of a mouse's diet, they have been known to hunt and eat everything from worms, snails, slugs, beetles, centipedes, grasshoppers, cockroaches, and even scorpions.
Natural Predators
Which animals do mice have to worry about most? While it is not unheard of for some of the larger tarantulas to feast upon a mouse, most spiders do not count mice among their regular prey, and in fact spiders may instead appear on a mouse's diet.
In times of starvation, mice have even been known to exhibit cannibalistic behavior. Females may consume their offspring, and some mice may consume their own tails. However, this behavior is generally only exhibited when under duress. Mice may also gnaw on other, seemingly inedible materials.
Mice are small but frequent eaters. They can only go two to four days without food. Before you think it's easy to starve them out, consider that they may have food cached or go outside to forage.
Mice chew food, boxes, wallpaper, and furniture. Usually you find little bits of damage in lots of places, rather than a lot of damage in one place.
Red-headed Mouse Spiders can be found in open forest to semi-arid shrub-land habitats. The females tend to remain in or near their burrows throughout their life, and are sluggish spiders that are rarely aggressive.
House mice fall prey to owls, hawks, cats, dogs, skunks and snakes. Barn owls are particularly efficient mice predators. A single family of these owls can consume more than a dozen mice in one night. House mice usually live only one year in the wild due to predators and exposure to unfriendly environments.
Black house spiders are venomous but are not considered dangerous. They are timid and bites from them are infrequent. The bite may be excruciatingly painful and cause local swelling. Symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, sweating, and dizziness are occasionally recorded.
Spiders avoid people, animals, and most insects – except for the one's they're about to eat of course. As stated above, most spiders are relatively small. That makes them especially vulnerable. Many birds and animals may try to eat spiders, or at the very least, they'll probably interfere with the spider's food source.
Some spiders have life spans of less than a year, while others may live for up to twenty years. However, spiders face many dangers that reduce their chances of reaching a ripe old age. Spiders and their eggs and young are food for many animals.
Zinc phosphide is an acute toxicant that causes the death of a house mouse within several hours after a lethal dose is ingested. It appears to be the fastest way of getting rid of mice by reducing their population.
In fact, mice are explorers who go around looking for any source of food they can find. Just because your home is clean, doesn't mean you're protected from a mice infestation.
Under or behind kitchen cabinets and appliances, inside or under bathroom cabinets, inside old cardboard boxes, in water heater closets, between ceiling that are near heat sources, under furniture, inside upholstered furniture voids, and in corners of an undisturbed room with lots of clutter.
Instead of catching mice, like mouse traps do, ultrasonic devices emit sound waves at a frequency that mice find absolutely unbearable. Ultrasonic devices with a sound frequency of 10,000 Hz are most effective at keeping mice away. It's best to buy several of these devices and replace them every 3 weeks.
But Epsom salt isn't just good for humans! It can also be used to repel rodents due to its acrid smell. Sprinkling Epsom salt onto your trash can lid or around areas where rodents are known to burrow creates a protective boundary that can keep them away.
Dryer sheets do not repel mice. The belief that dryer sheets can repel mice has gained popularity over time, primarily due to the assumption that scent of dryer sheets might deter rodents. However, this is a misconception, and using dryer sheets as a mouse repellent is not a reliable or proven method.
Mice actually prefer to avoid human contact and are rather shy creatures, so the chances of them snuggling up with you in bed is not likely.
Mice have a very sensitive sense of smell, and if they sense the smell of a predator, they are much more likely to avoid the area. However, mice do not seem to be afraid of dog smells or their fur.
To discourage mice, remove all food sources by storing grains, pet food, and other dry goods in metal containers. Make sure mice won't find nesting material by storing all soft, fluffy material like fabric, rugs and blankets in heavy plastic or metal boxes.