Quote Originally Posted by Domino Quartz View Post
So, there was a mouse living in my room. Was, because it is now dead. For at least a few weeks, it had been in there, either waking me up or keeping me awake at night by making scratching noises under my bed or rustling noises in the corner of my room. It was infuriating. I really wanted to get rid of this mouse so that I could sleep peacefully. Finally, yesterday evening I bought some mousetraps from my local supermarket. Then I baited one with a tiny piece of bread with marmite (chosen for its strong smell) on it, and set it in the corner of my room. When I woke up, I checked the mousetrap, and sure enough, there the mouse was, dead. I disposed of its body and washed the mousetrap, but I also felt really bad about it for some reason. The mouse just wanted somewhere warm to live (just so you know, I'm in the southern hemisphere and it's starting to get colder now as we head towards winter), and some food, and now it's dead. Why do I feel so bad about killing a mouse?
You have watched 100 times as many videos with anthropomorphic mice as you have killed mice, is my guess. Social animals have instinctive aversions to killing members of their own species, otherwise being social wouldn't really work. We get trained from birth to apply that instinct to a massive bevy of animals and objects, especially in kids programming.