Much like a scene out of Tom and Jerry, a lab mouse managed to escape by clinging onto a lab tech’s shoulders – as she frantically searches for the absconding animal.
CCTV footage from a lab in Shanghai, China, shows the technician taking mice out of their boxes to be weighed when three jump out to escape.
In the hilarious video, Tian Yongyi is seen panicking after the mice she is moving escape the box and climb all over her.
She frantically searches for the mouse, lying on the floor and looking under cabinets and boxes.
But the mouse was actually holding onto her lab coat for a whole ten minutes without her even noticing, climbing around and avoiding detection.
Wearing a mask and blue hazmat suit, she seemingly can’t spot the mouse even when it moves and is holding onto her front.
The lab worker, who appears very confused, finally realises where the white mouse had been hiding and puts it back in its box.
One of her colleagues can be seen working at a desk in the background as she searches for the lost mouse.
Chinese animal testing facilities have come under scrutiny since allegations were first made about a ‘lab leak’ in Wuhan being the root of the Covid-19 outbreak.
It is not clear what the mice in the Shanghai facility shown in the footage were being used for and there is no suggestion there were any health and safety risks.
Mice are the animals most commonly used in biomedical research around the world.
