(All images: Heidi and Hans-Jürgenkoch/Eyevine)
IF YOU are scanning these pictures for the “ACME corporation” logo, stop. Although these instruments of torture could easily be imagined in the hands of a cartoon villain, they are real mousetraps developed through the ages.
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They might seem comical – after all, there is something very cartoon-like about a mouse being killed by a tiny French guillotine (top) or captured in a jar accessed via a ladder (above). But what photographers Heidi and Hans-Jürgen Koch wanted to capture was the creativity and imagination of inventors, dating back to our Stone Age ancestors (below), in an effort to protect their food from the furry menaces.
Some went for the brutal route exemplified by the classic snap trap, patented in 1894 by William C. Hooker, or the similar “Little Nipper”, patented in 1899 by James Henry Atkinson. Others designed more creative death traps, using nails to crush or stab the captured mouse (above), wires to strangle it (below) or a block of wood to crush it (very bottom).
The humane trap was the brainchild of Austin Kness in the 1920s, who designed a mousetrap that could capture several live mice without using bait. The German mash-pot trap depicted here (second photo from top) is an example of this, using a flour-covered ladder to entice the mouse to fall into the open mash-pot.
There have been more than 4000 patent applications filed for mousetraps – the most for any type of device, apparently. But despite these ingenious, or perhaps crazy, contraptions, our furry adversaries are still around, biting our bread, scratching our cupboards and leaving droppings on our floors. It seems that Jerry always has the last laugh.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Mousetrap evolution”