Etydhv

To the question If mice escaped on the International Space Station, could they live and thrive? both the answer and comments point out that while mice escaped from an experiment might survive a while if they could find food and water, their chewing on insulation and and seals could cause tremendous problems and endanger the lives of the crew.

It would then be absolutely critical to capture the mice as soon as possible.

How might a mousetrap for use in space work? How might it differ from terrestrial 1 g mousetraps?

"Mousetrap" may be generalized somewhat. Remember that the goal is to rid the station of the dangers posed by the mice.

Screenshot from Mice aboard the International Space Station

A solution that comes to mind is to seal off one section of the ISS at a time and depressurize it.

Finding and removing dead mice may be somewhat easier than finding and removing live ones that are actively avoiding capture.

(I fully agree with the comments - removing the dead mice would be a major problem)

There are many types of mousetraps, the traditional "snap trap" is unlikely to work well because it is dependent on pressure. Lethal traps like snap traps would be undesirable:

• Humane concerns


• Dead mice are a health concern in a closed environment


• You want the mice alive for experimentation

So that leaves you with non-lethal traps, the two that come to mind are:
Catch and Release traps:

These traps are all variations on a theme, mice come in to get the bait and the door closes behind them. There are simple mechanical ones and electronic ones, I'd assume the electric ones are better again because you don't want to be reliant on pressure sensing.

Glue traps: these are really just sheets of very sticky glue with bait in the middle. A mouse gets stuck to the glue, it's that simple. These aren't perfect as it can be difficult to get the mouse off in one piece, and you'd be introducing solvents into the atmosphere from the glue. But, they'd be useful for some hard to reach places.

I believe that funnel traps should work in zero-gravity. They are not active, do not use gravity or springs. Gravity may help the mouse fall in for those with opening at the top but imho that is not strictly needed as other designs use openings on the sides.

Image source Little Green Shop

Other suggestions here for trap mechanisms may have incorporated consideration of zero gravity on the operation of the trap, but not upon the mouse itself. In zero gravity, searching for a mouse is no longer an effectively 2-dimensional search of and behind surfaces. The moment a mouse escaped its enclosure and tried to walk along a surface, the very act of locomotion (by exerting force upon the surface) would propel its small mass away from the surface and into the three dimensional volume of the station.

One wouldn't need to be searching hiding places for the mouse, but simply scanning the air space. Catching it would be a simple manual process of plucking it out of the air. No matter how fast it tried running, its legs would be cycling uselessly and it would simply be drifting at relatively constant velocity until it collided with another surface, whereupon it would very quickly unintentionally launch itself back into the air.

I would think that a mousetrap on the ISS would work the same as one on earth, but secured to the sides of the station