This is what a team of researchers claim in a short report published this spring in Journal of Animal Science and Technology. They base this claim on a study in which they housed female periparturient mice in different environmental temperatures (20-23C versus 10-15C) and counted pups.
Based on what I know about on mouse maternal behaviour and pup survival, a topic I have been researching for more than a decade, I don’t believe that cold stress makes females kill their pups. In fact, our research shows that females often eat their already dead pups, but rarely ever do they actively kill pups.
But if presented with convincing data, I would of course change my mind. The important thing about the short report cited in the first paragraph is that it did not present any data on maternal behaviour. The only data presented is about pups – numbers born and numbers surviving.
A few years ago, these reflections would not have left our informal research group discussions, but now there are public fora for this kind of critical discussion. So I just wrote my first PubPeer comment.
Animalogues 