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  • 2016-10-05 (xsd:date)
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  • China's 'Three Squeaks' Live Mice Dish (en)
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  • A video purportedly showing clips of various people eating from plates of live, newborn mice was widely circulated on the internet in October 2016: https://youtu.be/XfjatL5iv9YThe three clips featured in the above-displayed video have been circulating on their own for several years, along with the claim that they depict people consuming a popular Chinese dish called Three Squeaks, supposedly named for the sounds the baby mice make before they are eaten: While rumors about The Three Squeaks have been circulating for at least a decade, evidence of the actual existence of this bizarre culinary practice is somewhat lacking. The video shown above, for instance, doesn't capture anyone actually eating the live mice. The animals are shown arrayed on plates, being dipped in soy sauce, and even being placed into a man's mouth, but the clips always abruptly end before showing anyone chewing or swallowing any mice. Other videos purportedly showing diners partaking in The Three Squeaks have similarly suspicious qualities. Many web sites have written about the Three Squeaks, but these accounts all repeat the same general claims — that the dish received its name due to the noise the mice make when they're eaten, and that this delicacy is allegedly widely available in the Guangdong province — and provide no additional first-hand information. The closest we came to unearthing a first-hand account of eating the Three Squeaks was one posted to the Straight Dope message board in 2000. That account provided a skeptical take on what a poster had heard on a talk radio show: There's plenty of anecdotal discussion of The Three Squeaks, but we haven't been able to find any credible source confirming that this is a common dish in China. Jerry Hopkins wrote about several cultures eating cooked mice and rat in his book Extreme Cuisines, but that work made no mention of a live mice appetizer. While it's certainly possible that some Chinese diners have eaten live mice at some point, we found no evidence The Three Squeaks is either a common Chinese dish or a new trend in Eastern cuisine. One definitely fictional scenario involving the eating of live rodents was described by Dean Koontz in his 2004 novel Frankenstein: The Prodigal Son: (en)
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