title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Docter has cited the 1973 film "Paper Moon" as inspiration for the concept of someone experiencing getting stuck with a kid who turns out to be the real expert, and he credits Lasseter for coming up with the “laughter is ten times more powerful than fear” concept.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Bill Murray was considered for the voice role of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan. He screen tested for the role and was interested, but when Pete Docter was unable to make contact with him, he took it as a "no". The voice role of Sulley went to John Goodman, the longtime co-star of the comedy series "Roseanne" and a regular in the films of the Coen brothers. Goodman interpreted the character to himself as the monster equivalent of a National Football League player. "He's like a seasoned lineman in the tenth year of his career," he said at the time. "He is totally dedicated and a total pro." Billy Crystal, having regretted turning down the part of Buzz Lightyear years prior, accepted that of Mike Wazowski, Sulley's one-eyed best friend and scare assistant.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In November 2000, early in the production of "Monsters, Inc.", Pixar packed up and moved for the second time since its Lucasfilm Ltd. years. The company's approximately 500 employees had become spread among three buildings, separated by a busy highway. The company moved from Point Richmond to a much bigger campus in Emeryville, co-designed by Lasseter and Steve Jobs.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In production, the film differed from earlier Pixar features, as every main character in this movie had its own lead animator – John Kahrs on Sulley, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave DeVan on Boo. Kahrs found that the "bearlike quality" of Goodman's voice provided an exceptionally good fit with the character. He faced a difficult challenge, however, in dealing with Sulley's sheer mass; traditionally, animators conveyed a figure's heaviness by giving it a slower, more belabored movement, but Kahrs was concerned that such an approach to a central character would give the film a "sluggish" feel. Like Goodman, Kahrs came to think of Sulley as a football player, one whose athleticism enabled him to move quickly in spite of his size. To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a University of California, Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Adding to Sulley's lifelike appearance was an intense effort by the technical team to refine the rendering of fur. Other production houses had tackled realistic fur, most notably Rhythm & Hues in its 1993 polar bear commercials for Coca-Cola and in its talking animals' faces in the 1995 film "Babe". This film, however, required fur on a much larger scale. From the standpoint of Pixar's engineers, the quest for fur posed several significant challenges; one was to figure out how to animate a large number of hairs – 2,320,413 of them on Sulley – in a reasonably efficient way, and another was to make sure that the hairs cast shadows on other ones. Without self-shadowing, either fur or hair takes on an unrealistic flat-colored look (e.g., in "Toy Story", the hair on Andy's toddler sister, as seen in that movie's opening sequence, is hair without self-shadowing).


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: The first fur test allowed Sulley to run an obstacle course. Results were not satisfactory, as such objects caught and stretched out the fur due to the extreme amount of motion. Another similar test was also unsuccessful, because, this time, the fur went "through" the objects.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Pixar then set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (short for "physics tool"). After a shot with Sulley in it had been animated, this department took the data for that shot and added Sulley's fur. Fizt allowed the fur to react in a more natural way. Every time when Sulley had to move, his fur (automatically) reacted to his movements, thus taking the effects of wind and gravity into account as well. The Fizt program also controlled the movement of Boo's clothes, which provided another "breakthrough". The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth was also a challenge to animate thanks to those hundreds of creases and wrinkles that automatically occurred in the clothing when the wearer moved. Also, this meant they had to solve the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled – in other words, to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect. Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. First of all, Boo was animated shirtless; the Simulation department then used Fizt to apply the shirt over Boo's body, and every time she moved, her clothes also reacted to her movements in a more natural manner.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Michael Kass, Pixar's senior scientist, was joined on "Monsters, Inc." by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin and developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem. The complexity of the shots in the film, including elaborate sets such as the door vault, required more computing power to render than any of Pixar's earlier efforts combined. The render farm in place for "Monsters, Inc." was made up of 3500 Sun Microsystems processors, compared with 1400 for "Toy Story 2" and only 200 for "Toy Story", both built on Sun's own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: The scene in which the Harryhausen's restaurant was decontaminated was originally going to feature the restaurant being blown up. Due to the September 11 attacks, the explosion was replaced by a plasma dome.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In October 2000, a teaser trailer of "Monsters, Inc." was unveiled, which could not only be found online, but was also attached to the home video releases of "Toy Story 2". This trailer would be attached to "102 Dalmatians" theatrically and can later be seen on the DVD release of "The Emperor's New Groove", which was released on May 1, 2001. Another "Monsters, Inc." trailer premiered in theaters in June 2001 with the release of "".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Several Happy Meal toys based on the film were released by McDonald's. Meanwhile, Hasbro debuted their own "Monsters, Inc." toys at the North American International Toy Fair event.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: The film premiered on October 28, 2001, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California. It was theatrically released on November 2, 2001 in the United States, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002. The theatrical release was accompanied by the Pixar short animated film "For the Birds".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: As with "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2", a montage of "outtakes" and a performance of a play based on a line from the film were made and included in the end credits of the film starting on December 7, 2001.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: After the success of the 3D re-release of "The Lion King", Disney and Pixar re-released "Monsters, Inc." in 3D on December 19, 2012.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: "Monsters, Inc." was released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002. Both releases are THX certified and feature the animated shorts "Mike's New Car" and "For the Birds". The DVD release gives the viewer the option of viewing the film either in widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) or fullscreen (family-friendly 1.33:1 aspect ratio without pan and scan). On the second disc, there are a variety of bonus features including animated shorts, outtakes, the "If I Didn't Have You" music video, and more. This release set records for the highest single-day DVD sales with 5 million copies being sold on its first day. Although this record was surpassed by "Spider-Man" two months later, the film continued to hold the highest single-day record for an animated movie until 2003 when "Finding Nemo" took it. The film was then released on Blu-ray on November 10, 2009, and on Blu-ray 3D on February 19, 2013. While the 2009 Blu-ray release featured a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound track, the 2013 reissue and its 3D counterpart feature a 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD track. " Monsters, Inc." was released on 4K Blu-ray on March 3, 2020.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: On opening day, "Monsters, Inc." earned $17.8 million, then generated $26.9 million the following day, making it the second-highest Saturday gross of all time, behind "The Mummy Returns". It ranked number one at the box office, taking the spot off of "K-PAX" and putting it into fourth place. The film's debut led to audience declines of "Thirteen Ghosts", "From Hell", "Riding in Cars with Boys" and other films. "Monsters, Inc." held the record for having the biggest opening weekend of an animated film, making $62,577,067 and surpassing the previous record held by "Toy Story 2". The film was ranked as the biggest three-day opening weekend for a Disney film, dethroning "Pearl Harbor". It was even the fourth film of the year to reach $60 million in its first three days, just after "The Mummy Returns", "Planet of the Apes" and "Rush Hour 2". The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%, making $24,055,001 that weekend for a combined $528 million. As of May 2013, it is the eighth-biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: The film made $289,916,256 in North America, and $287,509,478 in other territories, for a worldwide $577,425,734. The film is Pixar's ninth highest-grossing film worldwide and sixth in North America. For a time, the film surpassed "Aladdin" as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, only behind 1994's "The Lion King".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579), marking the sixth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country and the thirty-second highest-grossing film of all time. In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind "" for the weekend, it moved to first place on subsequent weekends due to exceptionally small decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office. It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as 2001's third highest-grossing film and the third largest U.S. animated feature of all time in the country behind "Toy Story 3" and "Finding Nemo".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of based on reviews, with an average score of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Clever, funny, and delightful to look at, "Monsters, Inc." delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all-ages animation." Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore, gave the film a rare "A+" grade, becoming the second Pixar film to gain an "A+" grade, after "Toy Story 2".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Charles Taylor of "Salon" magazine stated, "[i]t's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time." Elvis Mitchell of "The New York Times" gave it a positive review, praising the film's usage of "creative energy", saying "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as "Monsters, Inc."" Although Mike Clark of "USA Today" thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree", he also viewed the film as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: "ReelViews" film critic James Berardinelli gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote that the film was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups". Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a "B+" grade and praised its animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios – the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit – looks really, really terrific and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: "Monsters, Inc." won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Randy Newman, after fifteen previous nominations, for "If I Didn't Have You"). It was one of the first animated films to be nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to "Shrek"). It was also nominated for Best Original Score (lost to "") and Best Sound Editing (lost to "Pearl Harbor"). At the Kid's Choice Awards in 2002, it was nominated for "Favorite Voice in an Animated Movie" for Billy Crystal (who lost to Eddie Murphy in "Shrek").


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: "Monsters Inc." was Randy Newman's fourth feature film collaboration with Pixar. The end credits song "If I Didn't Have You" was sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. The score lost both these awards to "", but after sixteen nominations, the song "If I Didn't Have You" finally won Newman his first Academy Award for Best Original Song. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Shortly before the film's release, Pixar was sued by children's songwriter Lori Madrid of Wyoming, stating that the company had stolen her ideas from her 1997 poem "There's a Boy in My Closet".


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Madrid mailed her poem to six publishers in October 1999, notably Chronicle Books, before turning it into a local stage musical in August 2001. After seeing the trailer for "Monsters, Inc.", Madrid concluded that Chronicle Books had passed her work to Pixar and that the film was based on her work. In October 2001, she filed the suit against Chronicle Books, Pixar, and Disney in a federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her lawyer asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, that would forbid Pixar and Disney from releasing the film while the suit was pending.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In a hearing on November 1, 2001, the day before the film's scheduled release, the judge refused to issue the injunction. On June 26, 2002, he ruled that the film had nothing in common with the poem.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In November 2002, Stanley Mouse filed a lawsuit in which he alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings of "Excuse My Dust", a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998. The lawsuit also stated that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000 and discussed Mouse's work with him. A Disney spokeswoman responded, saying that the characters in "Monsters, Inc." were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams, and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights". The case was ultimately settled under undisclosed terms.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: A prequel, titled "Monsters University", was released on June 21, 2013. John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles of Sulley, Mike, and Randall, while Dan Scanlon directed the film. The prequel's plot focuses on Sulley and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become best friends.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: An animated short, "Mike's New Car", was made by Pixar in 2002 in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of "Monsters, Inc.", and on Pixar's Dedicated Shorts DVD. In August 2002, a manga version of "Monsters, Inc." was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's "Comic Bon Bon" magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it went out of print. A series of video games, including a multi-platform video game were created based on the film. The video games included "Monsters, Inc.", "Monsters, Inc. Scream Team" and "Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena". A game titled "Monsters, Inc. Run" was released on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on December 13, 2012.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Feld Entertainment toured a "Monsters, Inc." edition of their "Walt Disney's World on Ice" skating tour from 2003 to 2007. "Monsters, Inc." has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world. In 2006 Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California. In 2007, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, replacing The Timekeeper. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians and submit jokes of their own via text message. In 2009 Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disney Resort's Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, Japan.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In 2009, Boom! Studios produced a "Monsters Inc." comic book mini-series that ran for four issues. The storyline takes place after the movie and focuses on Sulley and Mike's daily struggles to operate Monsters Inc. on its new laughter-focused company policy. At the same time, their work is impeded by the revenge schemes of Randall and Waternoose, as well as a human child (indirectly revealed to be Sid Phillips from the "Toy Story" franchise) who has hijacked the company's closet door technology to commit a string of toy thefts throughout the human world.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: Sulley, Mike, Boo, Randall, Celia and Roz appear as playable characters in the video game "Diney Magic Kingdoms", being unlocked during the progress of the game's main storyline.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: A world based on the film made its debut appearance in the "Kingdom Hearts" series in "Kingdom Hearts III", making it the second Disney-Pixar movie featured in the series after "Toy Story". The world takes place after the events of the first film.


title: Monsters, Inc.

text: In November 2017, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about plans to develop a television series spin-off of "Monsters, Inc." among other properties owned by the company. By November of the following year the series was confirmed for Disney+, and would continue the story of the previous films. On April 9, 2019, it was announced that Goodman, Crystal, and Tilly would return as Mike, Sulley, and Celia, respectively for the series. Peterson returns as Roz and also voices her twin sister Roze. Additional cast members include Ben Feldman as Tylor Tuskmon, Mindy Kaling as Val, Henry Winkler as Fritz, Lucas Neff as Duncan, Alanna Ubach as Cutter, Stephen Stanton as Needleman and Smitty (replacing Gerson), and Aisha Tyler as Tylor's mother Millie. In addition, Ratzenberger returns as Yeti and also voices Tylor's father Bernard. It was released on Disney+ on July 7, 2021. The series begins the day after Waternoose's arrest and follows Tylor who hopes to be promoted to the Laugh Floor.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, scored by and starring Clint Eastwood from a screenplay written by Paul Haggis, based on stories from the 2000 collection "Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner" by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and cutman Jerry Boyd. It also stars Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. The film follows Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald (Swank), an underdog amateur boxer who is helped by an underappreciated boxing trainer (Eastwood) to achieve her dream of becoming a professional.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: "Million Dollar Baby" was theatrically released on December 15, 2004, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received critical acclaim and grossed $216.8 million worldwide. The film garnered seven nominations at the 77th Academy Awards and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (for Freeman).


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald, a waitress from the Ozarks, shows up at the Hit Pit, a rundown Los Angeles gym owned and operated by Frankie Dunn. Dunn is a cantankerous Irish-American trainer, revealed to be estranged from his own daughter. Maggie asks Frankie to train her, but he refuses as he does not train women and she is too old to begin a boxing career. Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, Frankie's friend and employee—the film's narrator—encourages and helps Maggie.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Frankie's prize prospect, "Big Willie" Little, signs with successful manager Mickey Mack after becoming impatient with Frankie rejecting offers for a championship bout. Frankie then reluctantly agrees to train Maggie.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Maggie fights her way up in the women's amateur boxing division with Frankie's coaching. Since she has earned a reputation for quick KOs, Frankie must resort to bribery to get other managers to put their trainee fighters up against her. Scrap, concerned when Frankie rejects several offers for big fights, arranges a meeting for Maggie with Mickey Mack but, out of loyalty to Frankie, she declines. Frankie bestows Maggie a Gaelic nickname, embroidered on her boxing robe, "Mo Chuisle" (misspelled in the film as "mo cuishle"), but does not tell her its meaning. The two travel to Europe as she continues to win; Maggie eventually saves up enough of her winnings to buy her mother a house, but her mother berates Maggie for endangering her government aid, claiming that everyone back home is laughing at her.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Frankie is finally willing to arrange a title fight. He secures Maggie a $1 million match in Las Vegas against the WBA women's welterweight champion, Billie "The Blue Bear" Osterman, a German ex-prostitute who has a reputation as an unpunished dirty fighter. Maggie begins to dominate the fight, but Billie knocks her out with an illegal sucker punch from behind after the bell rings to end the round. Maggie lands hard on her corner stool, breaking her neck and leaving her a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: While in the hospital, Maggie looks forward to a visit from her family. They arrive only after first touring Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. Accompanied by an attorney, their sole concern is to get Maggie's assets transferred to them. Disgusted, she orders them to leave and threatens to report their welfare fraud if they try to contact her again.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Maggie soon develops bedsores and undergoes an amputation for an infected leg. She then asks Frankie to help her die, declaring that she got everything she wanted out of life. A horrified Frankie refuses, so Maggie later bites off her own tongue in an attempt to bleed to death. Knowing the fatherly affection Frankie has developed for Maggie, Frankie's priest warns him that he would never find himself again if he were to go through with Maggie's request. Frankie then sneaks into the hospital one night, unaware that Scrap is watching from the shadows. Just before administering a fatal injection of adrenaline, he tells Maggie the meaning of "mo chuisle": "my darling, and my blood." He never returns to the gym. Scrap's narration is revealed to be a letter to Frankie's daughter, informing her of her father's true character.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: After being fired from the television series "Family Law", Haggis wrote the script on spec, and it took four years to sell it. The film was stuck in development hell for years before it was shot. Several studios rejected the project even when Eastwood signed on as actor and director. Even Warner Bros., Eastwood's longtime home base, would not agree to a $30 million budget. Eastwood persuaded Lakeshore Entertainment's Tom Rosenberg to put up half the budget (as well as handle foreign distribution), with Warner Bros. contributing the rest. Eastwood shot the film in less than 40 days between June and July 2004. Filming took place in Los Angeles and film sets at Warner Bros. Studios. The term 'Million Dollar Baby' was from the nose art of a World War II Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. The titular phrase 'million dollar baby' was used as an insult during pre-fight publicity by Sonny Liston to Muhammad Ali, the latter of whom was an underdog at the time. Eastwood had his daughter Morgan Colette appear in a brief role as a girl who waves to Swank's character at a gas station.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Eastwood had confidence in Swank's acting, but upon seeing Swank's small physique, he had concerns, "I just thought, 'Yeah, this gal would be great. If we can get her trained up. If we can get a little bit more bulk on her, to make her look like a fighter'...She was like a feather. But what happened is, she had this great work ethic."


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Consequently, to prepare for her role, Swank underwent extensive training in the ring and weight room, gaining 19 pounds of muscle, aided by professional trainer Grant L Roberts. She trained for nearly five hours every day, winding up with a potentially life-threatening staphylococcus infection. She did not tell Eastwood about the infection because she thought it would be out of character for Maggie.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: "Million Dollar Baby" initially had a limited release, opening in eight theaters in December 2004. In its later wide release opening, the film earned $12,265,482 in North America and quickly became a box-office hit both domestically and internationally. It grossed $216,763,646 in theaters; $100,492,203 in the United States, and $116,271,443 in other territories. The film played in theaters for six and a half months.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "Million Dollar Baby" has an approval rating of 90% based on 269 reviews, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Clint Eastwood's assured direction—combined with knockout performances from Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman—help "Million Dollar Baby" to transcend its clichés, and the result is deeply heartfelt and moving." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun Times" gave the film four stars and stated that "Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is a masterpiece, pure and simple," listing it as the best film of 2004. Michael Medved stated: "My main objection to "Million Dollar Baby" always centered on its misleading marketing, and effort by Warner Brothers to sell it as a movie about a female "Rocky", with barely a hint of the pitch-dark substance that led Andrew Sarris of the "New York Observer" ... to declare that 'no movie in my memory has depressed me more than "Million Dollar Baby".'"


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: In early 2005, the film sparked controversy when some disability rights activists protested the ending. The Disability Rights Education Fund released a statement about the film in February 2005 that included the following: "Perhaps the most central stereotype fueling disability prejudice is the mistaken assumption inherent in the message of the movie that the quality of life of individuals with disabilities is unquestionably not worth living. This stereotype is contradicted by the personal experience of many thousands of people with significant disabilities in this country and around the world who view our own lives as ordinary and normal. It is further contradicted by plenty of hard data. Research overwhelmingly shows that people with disabilities find satisfaction in our lives to the same degree, or greater, than does the general public." The "Chicago Tribune" reported that protests against the film by disability activists occurred in Chicago, Berkeley, and other cities, and that Clint Eastwood had previously lobbied for weakening provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Wesley J. Smith in "The Weekly Standard" also criticized the film for its ending and for missed opportunities; Smith said, "The movie could have ended with Maggie triumphing once again, perhaps having obtained an education and becoming a teacher; or, opening a business managing boxers; or perhaps, receiving a standing ovation as an inspirational speaker."


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: Eastwood responded to the criticism by saying the film was about the American dream. In an interview with the "Los Angeles Times", Eastwood distanced himself from the actions of characters in his films, noting, "I've gone around in movies blowing people away with a .44 Magnum. But that doesn't mean I think that's a proper thing to do". Roger Ebert stated that "a movie is not good or bad because of its content, but because of how it handles its content. "Million Dollar Baby" is classical in the clean, clear, strong lines of its story and characters, and had an enormous emotional impact".


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: The Gaelic nickname for Swank's character comes from the original phrase "a chuisle mo chroí", meaning "O pulse of my heart"; one critic noted that the use of Gaelic in the film led to some interest in the language and the phrase.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: "Million Dollar Baby" received the award for Best Picture of 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards. Clint Eastwood was awarded his second Best Director Oscar for the film, and also received a Best Actor in a Leading Role nomination. Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman received Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscars, respectively. Joel Cox, Eastwood's editor for many years, was nominated for Best Film Editing, and Paul Haggis was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay award.


title: Million Dollar Baby

text: The film was released on VHS and DVD on July 12, 2005, and all editions of the Region 1 DVD, except for the "Deluxe Edition", came with a paperback copy of the book "Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner". An HD DVD release was issued on April 18, 2006. The Blu-ray Disc version was released on November 14, 2006. It was the first Best Picture winner released on either high-definition optical disc format in the U.S.; it and "Unforgiven" (also starring Eastwood and Freeman) were the only ones released in the U.S. on HD DVD prior to the first one released in the U.S. on Blu-ray, "Crash". The film is also available online through video on demand and most major streaming platforms.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Melissa Joan Hart (born April 18, 1976) is an American actress, producer, and director. She had starring roles as the title characters in the sitcoms "Clarissa Explains It All" (1991–1994), "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" (1996–2003), and "Melissa & Joey" (2010–2015), and also in "No Good Nick" (2019). She has also appeared in films "Drive Me Crazy" (1999), "Nine Dead" (2009), and "God's Not Dead 2" (2016). On October 17, 2021, she became the first celebrity to win the $1 million top prize for her charity, Youth Villages, on "Celebrity Wheel of Fortune" and the fourth overall million dollar winner on "Wheel of Fortune".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart was born in Smithtown, New York, the first child of Paula Hart (née Voje), a producer and talent manager, and William Hart, a carpenter, shellfish purveyor, oyster hatchery worker, and entrepreneur. Her maternal grandfather, Stanley John Voje, was a Navy veteran and Catholic. Hart grew up in Sayville, New York.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart's parents had four other children after Melissa: Trisha, Elizabeth, Brian, and Emily, who are all in acting. Her parents divorced in the early 1990s, and she moved with her mother and siblings to New York City. In 1994, her mother married television executive Leslie Gilliams, who is best known for his appearance on Season 5 of "MasterChef" in 2014, when he finished in 3rd place. Hart has three half-sisters: Alexandra, Samantha, and Mackenzie.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart was named after the Allman Brothers song "Melissa", while her middle name, Joan, came from her maternal grandmother. She chose Catherine as her confirmation name when she was in the eighth grade, but does not use it professionally.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart's career began at age four when she made a television commercial for a bathtub doll called Splashy. From then on, she appeared regularly in commercials, making 25 of them before the age of five. Other early television work included a small role in the miniseries "Kane & Abel" in 1985, a guest-starring role in an episode of "The Equalizer" in 1986, and a starring role alongside Katherine Helmond in the Emmy Award-winning TV movie "Christmas Snow", also in 1986. She appeared on the April 22, 1986 episode of the NBC daytime soap opera "Another World". She also auditioned for the lead role Jamie Lloyd in "", losing the role to Danielle Harris.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 1989, she became an understudy in a Broadway production of "The Crucible" starring Martin Sheen. That same year, she appeared in an off-Broadway production of "Beside Herself" with William Hurt and Calista Flockhart.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 1991 Hart landed the starring role on the Nickelodeon series "Clarissa Explains It All", a comedy about a teenaged girl in everyday situations, which was successful during its four-year run. The show brought her four consecutive Young Artist Award nominations, winning three. Her role in the series also led to her starring in the FMV video game Nickelodeon's Director's Lab as a tour guide who takes the player around a movie studio.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Initially, after first being recognized in public, Hart felt embarrassed to be acting in a children's show while being a teenager. Nevertheless, she was enthusiastic about the role, and "all [she] hoped for that [she] would get to do it for a while."


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart also recorded two albums as Clarissa: "This Is What 'Na Na' Means" and a recording of "Peter and the Wolf".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 1995, a year after the end of "Clarissa Explains It All", Hart filmed a pilot episode for a spin-off show featuring a college-aged Clarissa explaining it all about her foray into the professional world as an intern at a newspaper. As its musical theme, the show featured a slow, jazz version of its predecessor's theme song, and also starred Robert Klein as her boss.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart appeared on Nickelodeon's anthology show "Are You Afraid of the Dark?", in the Season 2 episode "The Tale of the Frozen Ghost" (1993).


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: After the television series ended, Hart attended New York University. However, she dropped out after she earned the title role for the 1996 TV film "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", which was followed by the television series of the same name, which lasted seven seasons on ABC and The WB. She later collaborated on an that featured Hart voicing the two aunts Hilda and Zelda, and Hart's younger sister Emily starring in the title role. She also guest-starred on the series "Touched by an Angel" and starred in several TV movies. She guest starred on the "Boy Meets World" episode "Witches of Pennbrook" as her character Sabrina Spellman; the episode also guest starred Hart's closest friend Candace Cameron-Bure as a witch named Millie.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 1998, Hart had a small role in the film "Can't Hardly Wait"; shortly afterwards Hart began working on a theatrical film project titled "Next to You", in which she acted alongside Adrian Grenier. Britney Spears released a remix of her song "(You Drive Me) Crazy" to promote the movie's soundtrack. To capitalize on the song's success as a top-ten hit, the name of the movie was changed to "Drive Me Crazy". To promote the film, both Hart and Grenier appeared in the song's music video. Around the same time, Spears made a guest appearance as herself on "Sabrina", in the season four episode "No Place Like Home".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Coinciding with the release of "Drive Me Crazy", Hart appeared wearing lingerie on the cover of "Maxim" magazine's October 1999 issue, as well as in a photo shoot and an accompanying article, which resulted in an attempt by the publisher of the "Sabrina" comic book series to sue her for breach of contract. Hart continued her acting career, starring in the film "Rent Control", which aired in 2005 on the ABC Family cable network. Hart also continued to star on "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" until 2003. Hart was also a primary voice-actress on "", which ran for 65 episodes in 1999 on ABC and UPN.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 1999, Hart made her directorial debut in an episode of Disney Channel's "So Weird" called "Snapshot" which guest-starred her sister Emily. Hart directed an episode of Nickelodeon's "Taina" in 2001. In 2001 and 2002, she directed six episodes of "Sabrina".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: After "Sabrina" ended in 2003 after 7 seasons, Hart directed her first movie, a 15-minute live-action short film called "Mute" (2005), starring her sister Emily. In 2007, Hart guest-starred on an episode of "" titled "Impulsive" as a teacher accused of statutory rape. In late 2007, she directed the "Anger Cage" video for her husband Mark Wilkerson's band Course of Nature. She also starred in the ABC Family original movie "Holiday in Handcuffs", opposite Mario Lopez. The movie premiered on December 9, 2007, and was the highest rated program in the history of the network, with 6.7 million viewers. Hart followed this with another ABC movie with a similar premise, "My Fake Fiancé", in 2009.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: It was announced on August 17, 2009, that she would compete in season nine of "Dancing with the Stars". Hart was paired up with two-time reigning champion, Mark Ballas. She was eliminated from the competition in week six out of a possible ten. In 2010, Hart starred as Kelley in the horror thriller film "Nine Dead".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 2010, Hart returned to a new weekly television series, starring with Joey Lawrence in the ABC Family sitcom "Melissa & Joey". In the series Hart plays a woman who hires Lawrence as a nanny to help care for her incarcerated sister's children. In the second season, she occupied the director's chair for an episode, for the first time since "Sabrina".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart joined the cast of an off-Broadway production of "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" for a four-week run that started in March 2010 and ended April 25, 2010.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In March 2010, Hart took part in an ad campaign for Gain detergent with "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" co-star and friend Soleil Moon Frye.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In June 2012, St. Martin's Press announced that it had made a deal with Hart to publish her memoir "Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life" in the fall of 2013. In the memoir, Hart wrote about growing up, being a child actor and her rise to fame, her rebellious teen years, and her efforts to balance a career as an adult with motherhood and family life.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 2013, Hart attempted to use crowdfunding (via Kickstarter) to fund a romantic comedy movie to be titled "Darci's Walk of Shame", but was only able to garner $51,605, or just 2.6% of the expected $2 million goal. Ultimately, the idea was scrapped.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 2018, Hart was cast as Liz in the Netflix comedy series "No Good Nick". The series premiered on April 15, 2019. She directed one episode from "The Goldbergs", "Hail Barry" and the "Young Sheldon" episode "Cowboy Aerobics and 473 Grease-Free Bolts". Hart also made her return to Nickelodeon 25 years after the end of "Clarissa Explains It All" when she joined the voice cast of "The Casagrandes", a spinoff of "The Loud House".


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In 2022, Hart starred in the Lifetime film "Dirty Little Secret" as part of its "Ripped from the Headlines" feature film where it was inspired by true events and the book "Dirty Little Secrets" by C.J. Omolulu.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: In May 2009, Hart opened a candy shop called SweetHarts in Sherman Oaks, California. Hart commented that it had been her "childhood dream" to own a candy shop. SweetHarts closed in December 2011 due to a lawsuit by a former employee alleging wrongful termination and racial discrimination, as well as other issues. Hart denied all of the employee's claims, and the case was dismissed in 2012. SweetHarts later reopened with new owners before closing permanently in 2015.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: On July 19, 2003, Hart married musician Mark Wilkerson, having met at the Kentucky Derby in May 2002. The preparations for the ceremony, which took place in Florence, Italy, were documented in a TV miniseries titled "Tying the Knot", produced by Hart's production company Hartbreak Films and aired on ABC Family. Hart and Wilkerson have three sons, born in January 2006, March 2008, and September 2012. They lived in Westport, Connecticut, until 2019, when they moved to Lake Tahoe and then in 2020, they moved to Nashville.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart and Wilkerson were featured in "People" magazine's April 7, 2008, issue, introducing Braydon, their second child. Hart wrote a diary, including video entries, to document potty training her son, Mason, for Huggies Pull-Ups brand diapers.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart and her family are Presbyterians. In an interview, she stated that they attend church every Sunday and pray every night and before every meal.


title: Melissa Joan Hart

text: Hart has expressed her support for some Republican candidates, such as voting for Bob Dole during the 1996 election. On November 5, 2012, the day before that year's Election Day, she tweeted that she was endorsing Mitt Romney for president. Hart has expressed support for increased gun control, marching in a Moms Demand Action demonstration in Brooklyn in May 2016. On August 16, 2016, in the run-up to that year's presidential election, she donated to Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson's campaign. On August 28, 2016, she joined Johnson's campaign as its Connecticut chairperson.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are native to all major land masses except for New Zealand, Antarctica, and several oceanic islands, though they have subsequently been introduced to most of these land masses by human activity.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents are extremely diverse in their ecology and lifestyles and can be found in almost every terrestrial habitat, including human-made environments. Species can be arboreal, fossorial (burrowing), saltatorial/richochetal (leaping on their hind legs), or semiaquatic. However, all rodents share several morphological features, including having only a single upper and lower pair of ever-growing incisors. Well-known rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, prairie dogs, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters. Rabbits, hares, and pikas, whose incisors also grow continually (but have two pairs of upper incisors instead of one), were once included with them, but are now considered to be in a separate order, the Lagomorpha. Nonetheless, Rodentia and Lagomorpha are sister groups, sharing a single common ancestor and forming the clade of Glires.


title: Rodent

text: Most rodents are small animals with robust bodies, short limbs, and long tails. They use their sharp incisors to gnaw food, excavate burrows, and defend themselves. Most eat seeds or other plant material, but some have more varied diets. They tend to be social animals and many species live in societies with complex ways of communicating with each other. Mating among rodents can vary from monogamy, to polygyny, to promiscuity. Many have litters of underdeveloped, altricial young, while others are precocial (relatively well developed) at birth.


title: Rodent

text: The rodent fossil record dates back to the Paleocene on the supercontinent of Laurasia. Rodents greatly diversified in the Eocene, as they spread across continents, sometimes even crossing oceans. Rodents reached both South America and Madagascar from Africa and, until the arrival of "Homo sapiens", were the only terrestrial placental mammals to reach and colonize Australia.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents have been used as food, for clothing, as pets, and as laboratory animals in research. Some species, in particular, the brown rat, the black rat, and the house mouse, are serious pests, eating and spoiling food stored by humans and spreading diseases. Accidentally introduced species of rodents are often considered to be invasive and have caused the extinction of numerous species, such as island birds, the dodo being an example, previously isolated from land-based predators.


title: Rodent

text: The distinguishing feature of the rodents is their pairs of continuously growing, razor-sharp, open-rooted incisors. These incisors have thick layers of enamel on the front and little enamel on the back. Because they do not stop growing, the animal must continue to wear them down so that they do not reach and pierce the skull. As the incisors grind against each other, the softer dentine on the rear of the teeth wears away, leaving the sharp enamel edge shaped like the blade of a chisel. Most species have up to 22 teeth with no canines or anterior premolars. A gap, or diastema, occurs between the incisors and the cheek teeth in most species. This allows rodents to suck in their cheeks or lips to shield their mouth and throat from wood shavings and other inedible material, discarding this waste from the sides of their mouths. Chinchillas and guinea pigs have a high-fiber diet; their molars have no roots and grow continuously like their incisors.


title: Rodent

text: In many species, the molars are relatively large, intricately structured, and highly cusped or ridged. Rodent molars are well equipped to grind food into small particles. The jaw musculature is strong. The lower jaw is thrust forward while gnawing and is pulled backwards during chewing. Gnawing uses incisors and chewing uses molars, however, due to the cranial anatomy of rodents these feeding methods cannot be used at the same time and are considered to be mutually exclusive. Among rodents, the masseter muscles plays a key role in chewing, making up 60% - 80% of the total muscle mass among masticatory muscles and reflects rodents herbivorous diet. Rodent groups differ in the arrangement of the jaw muscles and associated skull structures, both from other mammals and amongst themselves. The Sciuromorpha, such as the eastern grey squirrel, have a large deep masseter, making them efficient at biting with the incisors. The Myomorpha, such as the brown rat, have enlarged temporalis and masseter muscles, making them able to chew powerfully with their molars. In rodents, masseter muscles insert behind the eyes and contribute to eye boggling that occurs during gnawing where the quick contraction and relaxation of the muscle causes the eyeballs to move up and down. The Hystricomorpha, such as the guinea pig, have larger superficial masseter muscles and smaller deep masseter muscles than rats or squirrels, possibly making them less efficient at biting with the incisors, but their enlarged internal pterygoid muscles may allow them to move the jaw further sideways when chewing. The cheek pouch is a specific morphological feature used for storing food and is evident in particular subgroups of rodents like kangaroo rats, hamsters, chipmunks and gophers which have two bags that may range from the mouth to the front of the shoulders. True mice and rats do not contain this structure but their cheeks are elastic due to a high degree of musculature and innervation in the region.


title: Rodent

text: While the largest species, the capybara, can weigh as much as , most rodents weigh less than . Rodents have wide-ranging morphologies, but typically have squat bodies and short limbs. The fore limbs usually have five digits, including an opposable thumb, while the hind limbs have three to five digits. The elbow gives the forearms great flexibility. The majority of species are plantigrade, walking on both the palms and soles of their feet, and have claw-like nails. The nails of burrowing species tend to be long and strong, while arboreal rodents have shorter, sharper nails. Rodent species use a wide variety of methods of locomotion including quadrupedal walking, running, burrowing, climbing, bipedal hopping (kangaroo rats and hopping mice), swimming and even gliding.


title: Rodent

text: Scaly-tailed squirrels and flying squirrels, although not closely related, can both glide from tree to tree using parachute-like membranes that stretch from the fore to the hind limbs. The agouti is fleet-footed and antelope-like, being digitigrade and having hoof-like nails. The majority of rodents have tails, which can be of many shapes and sizes. Some tails are prehensile, as in the Eurasian harvest mouse, and the fur on the tails can vary from bushy to completely bald. The tail is sometimes used for communication, as when beavers slap their tails on the water surface or house mice rattle their tails to indicate alarm. Some species have vestigial tails or no tails at all. In some species, the tail is capable of regeneration if a part is broken off.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents generally have well-developed senses of smell, hearing, and vision. Nocturnal species often have enlarged eyes and some are sensitive to ultraviolet light. Many species have long, sensitive whiskers or vibrissae for touch or "whisking". Whisker action is mostly driven by the brain stem, which is itself provoked by the cortex. However Legg et al. 1989 find an alternate circuit between the cortex and whiskers through the cerebellar circuits, and Hemelt & Keller 2008 the superior colliculus. Some rodents have cheek pouches, which may be lined with fur. These can be turned inside out for cleaning. In many species, the tongue cannot reach past the incisors. Rodents have efficient digestive systems, absorbing nearly 80% of ingested energy. When eating cellulose, the food is softened in the stomach and passed to the cecum, where bacteria reduce it to its carbohydrate elements. The rodent then practices coprophagy, eating its own fecal pellets, so the nutrients can be absorbed by the gut. Rodents therefore often produce a hard and dry fecal pellet. Horn et al. 2013 makes the finding that rodents entirely lack the ability to vomit. In many species, the penis contains a bone, the baculum; the testes can be located either abdominally or at the groin.


title: Rodent

text: Sexual dimorphism occurs in many rodent species. In some rodents, males are larger than females, while in others the reverse is true. Male-bias sexual dimorphism is typical for ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, solitary mole rats and pocket gophers; it likely developed due to sexual selection and greater male-male combat. Female-bias sexual dimorphism exists among chipmunks and jumping mice. It is not understood why this pattern occurs, but in the case of yellow-pine chipmunks, males may have selected larger females due to their greater reproductive success. In some species, such as voles, sexual dimorphism can vary from population to population. In bank voles, females are typically larger than males, but male-bias sexual dimorphism occurs in alpine populations, possibly because of the lack of predators and greater competition between males.


title: Rodent

text: One of the most widespread groups of mammals, rodents can be found on every continent except Antarctica. They are the only terrestrial placental mammals to have colonized Australia and New Guinea without human intervention. Humans have also allowed the animals to spread to many remote oceanic islands (e.g., the Polynesian rat). Rodents have adapted to almost every terrestrial habitat, from cold tundra (where they can live under snow) to hot deserts.


title: Rodent

text: Some species such as tree squirrels and New World porcupines are arboreal, while some, such as gophers, tuco-tucos, and mole rats, live almost completely underground, where they build complex burrow systems. Others dwell on the surface of the ground, but may have a burrow into which they can retreat. Beavers and muskrats are known for being semiaquatic, but the rodent best-adapted for aquatic life is probably the earless water rat from New Guinea. Rodents have also thrived in human-created environments such as agricultural and urban areas.


title: Rodent

text: Though some species are common pests for humans, rodents also play important ecological roles. Some rodents are considered keystone species and ecosystem engineers in their respective habitats. In the Great Plains of North America, the burrowing activities of prairie dogs play important roles in soil aeration and nutrient redistribution, raising the organic content of the soil and increasing the absorption of water. They maintain these grassland habitats, and some large herbivores such as bison and pronghorn prefer to graze near prairie dog colonies due to the increased nutritional quality of forage.


title: Rodent

text: Extirpation of prairie dogs can also contribute to regional and local biodiversity loss, increased seed depredation, and the establishment and spread of invasive shrubs. Burrowing rodents may eat the fruiting bodies of fungi and spread spores through their feces, thereby allowing the fungi to disperse and form symbiotic relationships with the roots of plants (which usually cannot thrive without them). As such, these rodents may play a role in maintaining healthy forests.


title: Rodent

text: In many temperate regions, beavers play an essential hydrological role. When building their dams and lodges, beavers alter the paths of streams and rivers and allow for the creation of extensive wetland habitats. One study found that engineering by beavers leads to a 33 percent increase in the number of herbaceous plant species in riparian areas. Another study found that beavers increase wild salmon populations. Meanwhile, some rodents are seen as pests, due to their wide range.


title: Rodent

text: Most rodents are herbivorous, feeding exclusively on plant material such as seeds, stems, leaves, flowers, and roots. Some are omnivorous and a few are predators. The field vole is a typical herbivorous rodent and feeds on grasses, herbs, root tubers, moss, and other vegetation, and gnaws on bark during the winter. It occasionally eats invertebrates such as insect larvae. The plains pocket gopher eats plant material found underground during tunneling, and also collects grasses, roots, and tubers in its cheek pouches and caches them in underground larder chambers.


title: Rodent

text: The Texas pocket gopher avoids emerging onto the surface to feed by seizing the roots of plants with its jaws and pulling them downwards into its burrow. It also practices coprophagy. The African pouched rat forages on the surface, gathering anything that might be edible into its capacious cheek pouches until its face bulges out sideways. It then returns to its burrow to sort through the material it has gathered and eats the nutritious items.


title: Rodent

text: Agouti species are one of the few animal groups that can break open the large capsules of the Brazil nut fruit. Too many seeds are inside to be consumed in one meal, so the agouti carries some off and caches them. This helps dispersal of the seeds as any that the agouti fails to retrieve are distant from the parent tree when they germinate. Other nut-bearing trees tend to bear a glut of fruits in the autumn. These are too numerous to be eaten in one meal and squirrels gather and store the surplus in crevices and hollow trees. In desert regions, seeds are often available only for short periods. The kangaroo rat collects all it can find and stores them in larder chambers in its burrow.


title: Rodent

text: A strategy for dealing with seasonal plenty is to eat as much as possible and store the surplus nutrients as fat. Marmots do this, and may be 50% heavier in the autumn than in the spring. They rely on their fat reserves during their long winter hibernation. Beavers feed on the leaves, buds, and inner bark of growing trees, as well as aquatic plants. They store food for winter use by felling small trees and leafy branches in the autumn and immersing them in their pond, sticking the ends into the mud to anchor them. Here, they can access their food supply underwater even when their pond is frozen over.


title: Rodent

text: Although rodents have been regarded traditionally as herbivores, most small rodents opportunistically include insects, worms, fungi, fish, or meat in their diets and a few have become specialized to rely on a diet of animal matter. A functional-morphological study of the rodent tooth system supports the idea that primitive rodents were omnivores rather than herbivores. Studies of the literature show that numerous members of the Sciuromorpha and Myomorpha, and a few members of the Hystricomorpha, have either included animal matter in their diets or been prepared to eat such food when offered it in captivity. Examination of the stomach contents of the North American white-footed mouse, normally considered to be herbivorous, showed 34% animal matter.


title: Rodent

text: More specialized carnivores include the shrewlike rats of the Philippines, which feed on insects and soft-bodied invertebrates, and the Australian water rat, which devours aquatic insects, fish, crustaceans, mussels, snails, frogs, birds' eggs, and water birds. The grasshopper mouse from dry regions of North America feeds on insects, scorpions, and other small mice, and only a small part of its diet is plant material. It has a chunky body with short legs and tail, but is agile and can easily overpower prey as large as itself.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents exhibit a wide range of types of social behavior ranging from the mammalian caste system of the naked mole-rat, the extensive "town" of the colonial prairie dog, through family groups to the independent, solitary life of the edible dormouse. Adult dormice may have overlapping feeding ranges, but they live in individual nests and feed separately, coming together briefly in the breeding season to mate. The pocket gopher is also a solitary animal outside the breeding season, each individual digging a complex tunnel system and maintaining a territory.


title: Rodent

text: Larger rodents tend to live in family units where parents and their offspring live together until the young disperse. Beavers live in extended family units typically with a pair of adults, this year's kits, the previous year's offspring, and sometimes older young. Brown rats usually live in small colonies with up to six females sharing a burrow and one male defending a territory around the burrow. At high population densities, this system breaks down and males show a hierarchical system of dominance with overlapping ranges. Female offspring remain in the colony while male young disperse. The prairie vole is monogamous and forms a lifelong pair bond. Outside the breeding season, prairie voles live with others in small colonies. A male is not aggressive towards other males until he has mated, after which time he defends a territory, a female, and a nest against other males. The pair huddles together, grooms one another, and shares nesting and pup-raising responsibilities.


title: Rodent

text: Among the most social of rodents are the ground squirrels, which typically form colonies based on female kinship, with males dispersing after weaning and becoming nomadic as adults. Cooperation in ground squirrels varies between species and typically includes making alarm calls, defending territories, sharing food, protecting nesting areas, and preventing infanticide. The black-tailed prairie dog forms large towns that may cover many hectares. The burrows do not interconnect, but are excavated and occupied by territorial family groups known as coteries. A coterie often consists of an adult male, three or four adult females, several nonbreeding yearlings, and the current year's offspring. Individuals within coteries are friendly with each other, but hostile towards outsiders.


title: Rodent

text: Perhaps the most extreme examples of colonial behavior in rodents are the eusocial naked mole rat and Damaraland mole rat. The naked mole rat lives completely underground and can form colonies of up to 80 individuals. Only one female and up to three males in the colony reproduce, while the rest of the members are smaller and sterile, and function as workers. Some individuals are of intermediate size. They help with the rearing of the young and can take the place of a reproductive if one dies. The Damaraland mole rat is characterized by having a single reproductively active male and female in a colony where the remaining animals are not truly sterile, but become fertile only if they establish a colony of their own.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents use scent marking in many social contexts including inter- and intra-species communication, the marking of trails and the establishment of territories. Their urine provides genetic information about individuals including the species, the sex and individual identity, and metabolic information on dominance, reproductive status and health. Compounds derived from the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are bound to several urinary proteins. The odor of a predator depresses scent-marking behavior.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents are able to recognize close relatives by smell and this allows them to show nepotism (preferential behavior toward their kin) and also avoid inbreeding. This kin recognition is by olfactory cues from urine, feces and glandular secretions. The main assessment may involve the MHC, where the degree of relatedness of two individuals is correlated to the MHC genes they have in common. In non-kin communication, where more permanent odor markers are required, as at territorial borders, then non-volatile major urinary proteins (MUPs), which function as pheromone transporters, may also be used. MUPs may also signal individual identity, with each male house mouse ("Mus musculus") excreting urine containing about a dozen genetically encoded MUPs.


title: Rodent

text: House mice deposit urine, which contains pheromones, for territorial marking, individual and group recognition, and social organization. Territorial beavers and red squirrels investigate and become familiar with the scents of their neighbors and respond less aggressively to intrusions by them than to those made by non-territorial "floaters" or strangers. This is known as the "dear enemy effect".


title: Rodent

text: Many rodent species, particularly those that are diurnal and social, have a wide range of alarm calls that are emitted when they perceive threats. There are both direct and indirect benefits of doing this. A potential predator may stop when it knows it has been detected, or an alarm call can allow conspecifics or related individuals to take evasive action. Several species, for example prairie dogs, have complex anti-predator alarm call systems. These species may have different calls for different predators (e.g. aerial predators or ground-based predators) and each call contains information about the nature of the precise threat. The urgency of the threat is also conveyed by the acoustic properties of the call.


title: Rodent

text: Social rodents have a wider range of vocalizations than do solitary species. Fifteen different call-types have been recognized in adult Kataba mole rats and four in juveniles. Similarly, the common degu, another social, burrowing rodent, exhibits a wide array of communication methods and has an elaborate vocal repertoire comprising fifteen different categories of sound. Ultrasonic calls play a part in social communication between dormice and are used when the individuals are out of sight of each other.


title: Rodent

text: House mice use both audible and ultrasonic calls in a variety of contexts. Audible vocalizations can often be heard during agonistic or aggressive encounters, whereas ultrasound is used in sexual communication and also by pups when they have fallen out of the nest.


title: Rodent

text: Laboratory rats (which are brown rats, "Rattus norvegicus") emit short, high frequency, ultrasonic vocalizations during purportedly pleasurable experiences such as rough-and-tumble play, when anticipating routine doses of morphine, during mating, and when tickled. The vocalization, described as a distinct "chirping", has been likened to laughter, and is interpreted as an expectation of something rewarding. In clinical studies, the chirping is associated with positive emotional feelings, and social bonding occurs with the tickler, resulting in the rats becoming conditioned to seek the tickling. However, as the rats age, the tendency to chirp declines. Like most rat vocalizations, the chirping is at frequencies too high for humans to hear without special equipment, so bat detectors have been used for this purpose.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents, like all placental mammals except primates, have just two types of light receptive cones in their retina, a short wavelength "blue-UV" type and a middle wavelength "green" type. They are therefore classified as dichromats; however, they are visually sensitive into the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum and therefore can see light that humans can not. The functions of this UV sensitivity are not always clear. In degus, for example, the belly reflects more UV light than the back. Therefore, when a degu stands up on its hind legs, which it does when alarmed, it exposes its belly to other degus and ultraviolet vision may serve a purpose in communicating the alarm. When it stands on all fours, its low UV-reflectance back could help make the degu less visible to predators. Ultraviolet light is abundant during the day but not at night. There is a large increase in the ratio of ultraviolet to visible light in the morning and evening twilight hours. Many rodents are active during twilight hours (crepuscular activity), and UV-sensitivity would be advantageous at these times. Ultraviolet reflectivity is of dubious value for nocturnal rodents.


title: Rodent

text: The urine of many rodents (e.g. voles, degus, mice, rats) strongly reflects UV light and this may be used in communication by leaving visible as well as olfactory markings. However, the amount of UV that is reflected decreases with time, which in some circumstances can be disadvantageous; the common kestrel can distinguish between old and fresh rodent trails and has greater success hunting over more recently marked routes.


title: Rodent

text: Vibrations can provide cues to conspecifics about specific behaviors being performed, predator warning and avoidance, herd or group maintenance, and courtship. The Middle East blind mole rat was the first mammal for which seismic communication was documented. These fossorial rodents bang their head against the walls of their tunnels. This behavior was initially interpreted as part of their tunnel building behavior, but it was eventually realized that they generate temporally patterned seismic signals for long-distance communication with neighboring mole rats.


title: Rodent

text: Footdrumming is used widely as a predator warning or defensive action. It is used primarily by fossorial or semi-fossorial rodents. The banner-tailed kangaroo rat produces several complex footdrumming patterns in a number of different contexts, one of which is when it encounters a snake. The footdrumming may alert nearby offspring but most likely conveys that the rat is too alert for a successful attack, thus preventing the snake's predatory pursuit. Several studies have indicated intentional use of ground vibrations as a means of intra-specific communication during courtship among the Cape mole rat. Footdrumming has been reported to be involved in male-male competition; the dominant male indicates its resource holding potential by drumming, thus minimizing physical contact with potential rivals.


title: Rodent

text: Some species of rodent are monogamous, with an adult male and female forming a lasting pair bond. Monogamy can come in two forms; obligate and facultative. In obligate monogamy, both parents care for the offspring and play an important part in their survival. This occurs in species such as California mice, oldfield mice, Malagasy giant rats and beavers. In these species, males usually mate only with their partners. In addition to increased care for young, obligate monogamy can also be beneficial to the adult male as it decreases the chances of never finding a mate or mating with an infertile female. In facultative monogamy, the males do not provide direct parental care and stay with one female because they cannot access others due to being spatially dispersed. Prairie voles appear to be an example of this form of monogamy, with males guarding and defending females within their vicinity.


title: Rodent

text: In polygynous species, males will try to monopolize and mate with multiple females. As with monogamy, polygyny in rodents can come in two forms; defense and non-defense. Defense polygyny involves males controlling territories that contain resources that attract females. This occurs in ground squirrels like yellow-bellied marmots, California ground squirrels, Columbian ground squirrels and Richardson's ground squirrels. Males with territories are known as "resident" males and the females that live within the territories are known as "resident" females. In the case of marmots, resident males do not appear to ever lose their territories and always win encounters with invading males. Some species are also known to directly defend their resident females and the ensuing fights can lead to severe wounding. In species with non-defense polygyny, males are not territorial and wander widely in search of females to monopolize. These males establish dominance hierarchies, with the high-ranking males having access to the most females. This occurs in species like Belding's ground squirrels and some tree squirrel species.


title: Rodent

text: Promiscuity, in which both males and females mate with multiple partners, also occurs in rodents. In species such as the white-footed mouse, females give birth to litters with multiple paternities. Promiscuity leads to increased sperm competition and males tend to have larger testicles. In the Cape ground squirrel, the male's testes can be 20 percent of its head-body length. Several rodent species have flexible mating systems that can vary between monogamy, polygyny and promiscuity.


title: Rodent

text: Female rodents play an active role in choosing their mates. Factors that contribute to female preference may include the size, dominance and spatial ability of the male. In the eusocial naked mole rats, a single female monopolizes mating from at least three males.


title: Rodent

text: In most rodent species, such as brown rats and house mice, ovulation occurs on a regular cycle while in others, such as voles, it is induced by mating. During copulation, males of some rodent species deposit a mating plug in the female's genital opening, both to prevent sperm leakage and to protect against other males inseminating the female. Females can remove the plug and may do so either immediately or after several hours.


title: Rodent

text: Metabolism of thyroid hormones and iodine in the mediobasal hypothalamus changes in response to photoperiod. Thyroid hormones in turn induce reproductive changes. This is found by Watanabe et al. 2004 and 2007, Barrett et al. 2007, Freeman et al. 2007, and Herwig et al. 2009 in Siberian hamsters, Revel et al. 2006 and Yasuo et al. 2007 in Syrian hamsters, Yasuo et al. 2007 and Ross et al. 2011 in rats, and Ono et al. 2008 in mice.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents may be born either altricial (blind, hairless and relatively underdeveloped) or precocial (mostly furred, eyes open and fairly developed) depending on the species. The altricial state is typical for squirrels and mice, while the precocial state usually occurs in species like guinea pigs and porcupines. Females with altricial young typically build elaborate nests before they give birth and maintain them until their offspring are weaned. The female gives birth sitting or lying down and the young emerge in the direction she is facing. The newborns first venture out of the nest a few days after they have opened their eyes and initially keep returning regularly. As they get older and more developed, they visit the nest less often and leave permanently when weaned.


title: Rodent

text: In precocial species, the mothers invest little in nest building and some do not build nests at all. The female gives birth standing and the young emerge behind her. Mothers of these species maintain contact with their highly mobile young with maternal contact calls. Though relatively independent and weaned within days, precocial young may continue to nurse and be groomed by their mothers. Rodent litter sizes also vary and females with smaller litters spend more time in the nest than those with larger litters.


title: Rodent

text: Mother rodents provide both direct parental care, such as nursing, grooming, retrieving and huddling, and indirect parenting, such as food caching, nest building and protection to their offspring. In many social species, young may be cared for by individuals other than their parents, a practice known as alloparenting or cooperative breeding. This is known to occur in black-tailed prairie dogs and Belding's ground squirrels, where mothers have communal nests and nurse unrelated young along with their own. There is some question as to whether these mothers can distinguish which young are theirs. In the Patagonian mara, young are also placed in communal warrens, but mothers do not permit youngsters other than their own to nurse.


title: Rodent

text: Infanticide exists in numerous rodent species and may be practiced by adult conspecifics of either sex. Several reasons have been proposed for this behavior, including nutritional stress, resource competition, avoiding misdirecting parental care and, in the case of males, attempting to make the mother sexually receptive. The latter reason is well supported in primates and lions but less so in rodents. Infanticide appears to be widespread in black-tailed prairie dogs, including infanticide from invading males and immigrant females, as well as occasional cannibalism of an individual's own offspring. To protect against infanticide from other adults, female rodents may employ avoidance or direct aggression against potential perpetrators, multiple mating, territoriality or early termination of pregnancy. Feticide can also occur among rodents; in Alpine marmots, dominant females tend to suppress the reproduction of subordinates by being antagonistic towards them while they are pregnant. The resulting stress causes the fetuses to abort.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents have advanced cognitive abilities. They can quickly learn to avoid poisoned baits, which makes them difficult pests to deal with. Guinea pigs can learn and remember complex pathways to food. Squirrels and kangaroo rats are able to locate caches of food by spatial memory, rather than just by smell.


title: Rodent

text: Because laboratory mice (house mice) and rats (brown rats) are widely used as scientific models to further our understanding of biology, a great deal has come to be known about their cognitive capacities. Brown rats exhibit cognitive bias, where information processing is biased by whether they are in a positive or negative affective state. For example, laboratory rats trained to respond to a specific tone by pressing a lever to receive a reward, and to press another lever in response to a different tone so as to avoid receiving an electric shock, are more likely to respond to an intermediate tone by choosing the reward lever if they have just been tickled (something they enjoy), indicating "a link between the directly measured positive affective state and decision making under uncertainty in an animal model."


title: Rodent

text: Laboratory (brown) rats may have the capacity for metacognition—to consider their own learning and then make decisions based on what they know, or do not know, as indicated by choices they make apparently trading off difficulty of tasks and expected rewards, making them the first animals other than primates known to have this capacity, but these findings are disputed, since the rats may have been following simple operant conditioning principles, or a behavioral economic model. Brown rats use social learning in a wide range of situations, but perhaps especially so in acquiring food preferences.


title: Rodent

text: Dentition is the key feature by which fossil rodents are recognized and the earliest record of such mammals comes from the Paleocene, shortly after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. These fossils are found in Laurasia, the supercontinent composed of modern-day North America, Europe, and Asia. The divergence of Glires, a clade consisting of rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and pikas), from other placental mammals occurred within a few million years after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary; rodents and lagomorphs then radiated during the Cenozoic. Some molecular clock data suggest modern rodents (members of the order Rodentia) had appeared by the late Cretaceous, although other molecular divergence estimations are in agreement with the fossil record.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents are thought to have evolved in Asia, where local multituberculate faunas were severely affected by the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event and never fully recovered, unlike their North American and European relatives. In the resulting ecological vacuum, rodents and other Glires were able to evolve and diversify, taking the niches left by extinct multituberculates. The correlation between the spread of rodents and the demise of multituberculates is a controversial topic, not fully resolved. American and European multituberculate assemblages do decline in diversity in correlation with the introduction of rodents in these areas, but the remaining Asian multituberculates co-existed with rodents with no observable replacement taking place, and ultimately both clades co-existed for at least 15 million years.


title: Rodent

text: The history of the colonization of the world's continents by rodents is complex. The movements of the large superfamily Muroidea (including hamsters, gerbils, true mice and rats) may have involved up to seven colonizations of Africa, five of North America, four of Southeast Asia, two of South America and up to ten of Eurasia.


title: Rodent

text: During the Eocene, rodents began to diversify. Beavers appeared in Eurasia in the late Eocene before spreading to North America in the late Miocene. Late in the Eocene, hystricognaths invaded Africa, most probably having originated in Asia at least 39.5 million years ago. From Africa, fossil evidence shows that some hystricognaths (caviomorphs) , which was an isolated continent at the time, evidently making use of ocean currents to cross the Atlantic on floating debris. Caviomorphs had arrived in South America by 41 million years ago (implying a date at least as early as this for hystricognaths in Africa), and had reached the Greater Antilles by the early Oligocene, suggesting that they must have dispersed rapidly across South America.


title: Rodent

text: Nesomyid rodents are thought to have rafted from Africa to Madagascar 20–24 million years ago. All 27 species of native appear to be descendants of a single colonization event.


title: Rodent

text: By 20 million years ago, fossils recognizably belonging to the current families such as Muridae had emerged. By the Miocene, when Africa had collided with Asia, African rodents such as the porcupine began to spread into Eurasia. Some fossil species were very large in comparison to modern rodents and included the giant beaver, "Castoroides ohioensis", which grew to a length of and weight of . The largest known rodent was "Josephoartigasia monesi", a pacarana with an estimated body length of 3 m (10 ft).


title: Rodent

text: The first rodents arrived in Australia via Indonesia around 5 million years ago. Although marsupials are the most prominent mammals in Australia, many rodents, all belonging to the subfamily Murinae, are among the continent's mammal species. There are about fifty species of 'old endemics', the first wave of rodents to colonize the country in the Miocene and early Pliocene, and eight true rat ("Rattus") species of 'new endemics', arriving in a subsequent wave in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene. The earliest fossil rodents in Australia have a maximum age of 4.5 million years, and molecular data is consistent with the colonization of New Guinea from the west during the late Miocene or early Pliocene followed by rapid diversification. A further wave of adaptive radiation occurred after one or more colonizations of Australia some 2 to 3 million years later.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents participated in the Great American Interchange that resulted from the joining of the Americas by formation of the Isthmus of Panama, around 3 million years ago in the Piacenzian age. In this exchange, a such as the New World porcupines (Erethizontidae) headed north. However, the main southward invasion of sigmodontines preceded formation of the land bridge by at least several million years, probably occurring via rafting. Sigmodontines diversified explosively once in South America, although some degree of diversification may have already occurred in Central America before the colonization.


title: Rodent

text: The use of the order name "Rodentia" is attributed to the English traveler and naturalist Thomas Edward Bowdich (1821). The Modern Latin word is derived from , present participle of – "to gnaw", "eat away". The hares, rabbits and pikas (order Lagomorpha) have continuously growing incisors, as do rodents, and were at one time included in the order. However, they have an additional pair of incisors in the upper jaw and the two orders have quite separate evolutionary histories. The phylogeny of the rodents places them in the clades Glires, Euarchontoglires and Boreoeutheria. The cladogram below shows the inner and outer relations of Rodentia based on a 2012 attempt by Wu et al. to align the molecular clock with paleontological data:


title: Rodent

text: The order Rodentia may be divided into suborders, infraorders, superfamilies and families. There is a great deal of parallelism and convergence among rodents caused by the fact that they have tended to evolve to fill largely similar niches. This parallel evolution includes not only the structure of the teeth, but also the infraorbital region of the skull (below the eye socket) and makes classification difficult as similar traits may not be due to common ancestry. Brandt (1855) was the first to propose dividing Rodentia into three suborders, Sciuromorpha, Hystricomorpha and Myomorpha, based on the development of certain muscles in the jaw and this system was widely accepted. Schlosser (1884) performed a comprehensive review of rodent fossils, mainly using the cheek teeth, and found that they fitted into the classical system, but Tullborg (1899) proposed just two sub-orders, Sciurognathi and Hystricognathi. These were based on the degree of inflection of the lower jaw and were to be further subdivided into Sciuromorpha, Myomorpha, Hystricomorpha and Bathyergomorpha. Matthew (1910) created a phylogenetic tree of New World rodents but did not include the more problematic Old World species. Further attempts at classification continued without agreement, with some authors adopting the classical three suborder system and others Tullborg's two suborders.


title: Rodent

text: These disagreements remain unresolved, nor have molecular studies fully resolved the situation though they have confirmed the monophyly of the group and that the clade has descended from a common Paleocene ancestor. Carleton and Musser (2005) in "Mammal Species of the World" have provisionally adopted a five suborder system: Sciuromorpha, Castorimorpha, Myomorpha, Anomaluromorpha, and Hystricomorpha. As of 2021 the American Society of Mammalogists recognizes 34 recent families containing more than 481 genera and 2277 species.


title: Rodent

text: While rodents are not the most seriously threatened order of mammals, there are 168 species in 126 genera that are said to warrant conservation attention in the face of limited appreciation by the public. Since 76 percent of rodent genera contain only one species, much phylogenetic diversity could be lost with a comparatively small number of extinctions. In the absence of more detailed knowledge of species at risk and accurate taxonomy, conservation must be based mainly on higher taxa (such as families rather than species) and geographical hot spots. Several species of rice rat have become extinct since the 19th century, probably through habitat loss and the introduction of alien species. In Colombia, the brown hairy dwarf porcupine was recorded from only two mountain localities in the 1920s, while the red crested soft-furred spiny rat is known only from its type locality on the Caribbean coast, so these species are considered vulnerable. The IUCN Species Survival Commission writes "We can safely conclude that many South American rodents are seriously threatened, mainly by environmental disturbance and intensive hunting".


title: Rodent

text: The "three now cosmopolitan commensal rodent pest species" (the brown rat, the black rat and the house mouse) have been dispersed in association with humans, partly on sailing ships in the Age of Exploration, and with a fourth species in the Pacific, the Polynesian rat ("Rattus exulans"), have severely damaged island biotas around the world. For example, when the black rat reached Lord Howe Island in 1918, over 40 percent of the terrestrial bird species of the island, including the Lord Howe fantail, became extinct within ten years. Similar destruction has been seen on Midway Island (1943) and Big South Cape Island (1962). Conservation projects can with careful planning completely eradicate these pest rodents from islands using an anticoagulant rodenticide such as brodifacoum. This approach has been successful on the island of Lundy in the United Kingdom, where the eradication of an estimated 40,000 brown rats is giving populations of Manx shearwater and Atlantic puffin a chance to recover from near-extinction.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents have also been susceptible to climate change, especially species living on low-lying islands. The Bramble Cay melomys, which lived in the northernmost point of land of Australia, was the first mammal species to be declared extinct as a consequence of human-caused climate change.


title: Rodent

text: Humanity has long used animal skins for clothing, as the leather is durable and the fur provides extra insulation. The native people of North America made much use of beaver pelts, tanning and sewing them together to make robes. Europeans appreciated the quality of these and the North American fur trade developed and became of prime importance to early settlers. In Europe, the soft underfur known as "beaver wool" was found to be ideal for felting and was made into beaver hats and trimming for clothing. Later, the coypu took over as a cheaper source of fur for felting and was farmed extensively in America and Europe; however, fashions changed, new materials became available and this area of the animal fur industry declined. The chinchilla has a soft and silky coat and the demand for its fur was so high that it was nearly wiped out in the wild before farming took over as the main source of pelts. The quills and guardhairs of porcupines are used for traditional decorative clothing. For example, their guardhairs are used in the creation of the Native American "porky roach" headdress. The main quills may be dyed, and then applied in combination with thread to embellish leather accessories such as knife sheaths and leather bags. Lakota women would harvest the quills for quillwork by throwing a blanket over a porcupine and retrieving the quills it left stuck in the blanket.


title: Rodent

text: At least 89 species of rodent, mostly Hystricomorpha such as guinea pigs, agoutis and capybaras, are eaten by humans; in 1985, there were at least 42 different societies in which people eat rats. Guinea pigs were first raised for food around 2500 B.C. and by 1500 B.C. had become the main source of meat for the Inca Empire. Dormice were raised by the Romans in special pots called "gliraria", or in large outdoor enclosures, where they were fattened on walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns. The dormice were also caught from the wild in autumn when they were fattest, and either roasted and dipped into honey or baked while stuffed with a mixture of pork, pine nuts, and other flavorings. Researchers found that in Amazonia, where large mammals were scarce, pacas and common agoutis accounted for around 40 percent of the annual game taken by the indigenous people, but in forested areas where larger mammals were abundant, these rodents constituted only about 3 percent of the take.


title: Rodent

text: Guinea pigs are used in the cuisine of Cuzco, Peru, in dishes such as "cuy al horno", baked guinea pig. The traditional Andean stove, known as a "qoncha" or a "fogón", is made from mud and clay reinforced with straw and hair from animals such as guinea pigs. In Peru, there are at any time 20 million domestic guinea pigs, which annually produce 64 million edible carcasses. This animal is an excellent food source since the flesh is 19% protein. In the United States, mostly squirrels, but also muskrats, porcupines, and groundhogs are eaten by humans. The Navajo people ate prairie dog baked in mud, while the Paiute ate gophers, squirrels, and rats.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents are used widely as model organisms in animal testing. Albino mutant rats were first used for research in 1828 and later became the first animal domesticated for purely scientific purposes. Nowadays, the house mouse is the most commonly used laboratory rodent, and in 1979 it was estimated that fifty million were used annually worldwide. They are favored because of their small size, fertility, short gestation period and ease of handling and because they are susceptible to many of the conditions and infections that afflict humans. They are used in research into genetics, developmental biology, cell biology, oncology and immunology. Guinea pigs were popular laboratory animals until the late 20th century; about 2.5 million guinea pigs were used annually in the United States for research in the 1960s, but that total decreased to about 375,000 by the mid-1990s. In 2007, they constituted about 2% of all laboratory animals. Guinea pigs played a major role in the establishment of germ theory in the late 19th century, through the experiments of Louis Pasteur, Émile Roux, and Robert Koch. They have been launched into orbital space flight several times—first by the USSR on the Sputnik 9 biosatellite of 9 March 1961, with a successful recovery. The naked mole rat is the only known mammal that is poikilothermic; it is used in studies on thermoregulation. It is also unusual in not producing the neurotransmitter substance P, a fact which researchers find useful in studies on pain.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents have sensitive olfactory abilities, which have been used by humans to detect odors or chemicals of interest. The Gambian pouched rat is able to detect tuberculosis bacilli with a sensitivity of up to 86.6%, and specificity (detecting the absence of the bacilli) of over 93%; the same species has been trained to detect land mines. Rats have been studied for possible use in hazardous situations such as in disaster zones. They can be trained to respond to commands, which may be given remotely, and even persuaded to venture into brightly lit areas, which rats usually avoid.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents including guinea pigs, mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, chinchillas, degus and chipmunks make convenient pets able to live in small spaces, each species with its own qualities. Most are normally kept in cages of suitable sizes and have varied requirements for space and social interaction. If handled from a young age, they are usually docile and do not bite. Guinea pigs have a long lifespan and need a large cage. Rats also need plenty of space and can become very tame, can learn tricks and seem to enjoy human companionship. Mice are short-lived but take up very little space. Hamsters are solitary but tend to be nocturnal. They have interesting behaviors, but unless handled regularly they may be defensive. Gerbils are not usually aggressive, rarely bite and are sociable animals that enjoy the company of humans and their own kind.


title: Rodent

text: Some rodent species are serious agricultural pests, eating large quantities of food stored by humans. For example, in 2003, the amount of rice lost to mice and rats in Asia was estimated to be enough to feed 200 million people. Most of the damage worldwide is caused by a relatively small number of species, chiefly rats and mice. In Indonesia and Tanzania, rodents reduce crop yields by around fifteen percent, while in some instances in South America losses have reached ninety percent. Across Africa, rodents including "Mastomys" and "Arvicanthis" damage cereals, groundnuts, vegetables and cacao. In Asia, rats, mice and species such as "Microtus brandti", "Meriones unguiculatus" and "Eospalax baileyi" damage crops of rice, sorghum, tubers, vegetables and nuts. In Europe, as well as rats and mice, species of "Apodemus", "Microtus" and in occasional outbreaks "Arvicola terrestris" cause damage to orchards, vegetables and pasture as well as cereals. In South America, a wider range of rodent species, such as "Holochilus", "Akodon", "Calomys", "Oligoryzomys", "Phyllotis", "Sigmodon" and "Zygodontomys", damage many crops including sugar cane, fruits, vegetables, and tubers.


title: Rodent

text: Rodents are also significant vectors of disease. The black rat, with the fleas that it carries, plays a primary role in spreading the bacterium "Yersinia pestis" responsible for bubonic plague, and carries the organisms responsible for typhus, Weil's disease, toxoplasmosis and trichinosis. A number of rodents carry hantaviruses, including the Puumala, Dobrava and Saaremaa viruses, which can infect humans. Rodents also help to transmit diseases including babesiosis, cutaneous leishmaniasis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, Lyme disease, Omsk hemorrhagic fever, Powassan virus, rickettsialpox, relapsing fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and West Nile virus.


title: Rodent

text: Because rodents are a nuisance and endanger public health, human societies often attempt to control them. Traditionally, this involved poisoning and trapping, methods that were not always safe or effective. More recently, integrated pest management attempts to improve control with a combination of surveys to determine the size and distribution of the pest population, the establishment of tolerance limits (levels of pest activity at which to intervene), interventions, and evaluation of effectiveness based on repeated surveys. Interventions may include education, making and applying laws and regulations, modifying the habitat, changing farming practices, and biological control using pathogens or predators, as well as poisoning and trapping. The use of pathogens such as "Salmonella" has the drawback that they can infect man and domestic animals, and rodents often become resistant. The use of predators including ferrets, mongooses and monitor lizards has been found unsatisfactory. Domestic and feral cats are able to control rodents effectively, provided the rodent population is not too large. In the UK, two species in particular, the house mouse and the brown rat, are actively controlled to limit damage in growing crops, loss and contamination of stored crops and structural damage to facilities, as well as to comply with the law.


title: Nord Stream

text: Nord Stream (German-English mixed expression; and , literally 'North Stream'; , "Severny potok") is a network of offshore natural gas pipelines in Europe which run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. It comprises two separate projects, Nord Stream 1 and 2. Both pipelines each comprise two pipes, NS1 A and B as well as NS2 A and B, for a total of 4 physical pipes. Both pipelines land in Lubmin, Germany.


title: Nord Stream

text: On September 26, 2022, a severe drop in pressure in both NS1 and NS2 was associated with a rupture in both pipes due to sabotage. None of the four pipes are currently operational, bringing the Nord Stream project to an effective standstill. In reaction to this, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken stated that "... it’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. ..."


title: Serbia and Montenegro

text: Serbia and Montenegro () was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia) which bordered Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Albania to the southwest. The state was founded on 27 April 1992 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, known as FR Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia which comprised the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro. In February 2003, FR Yugoslavia was transformed from a federal republic to a political union until Montenegro seceded from the union in June 2006, leading to the full independence of both Serbia and Montenegro.