Calcutta: A Singapore Airlines flight to Calcutta on Monday night had 12 little passengers that the rest of the 165-odd on board were unaware of.
The 12 mice flew around 13,000km from New York and are now at IIT Kharagpur - not to attend any science conference but to be part of a research on neurological diseases.
Bred in Jackson Laboratory, Maine, in the US, the cousins of Stuart Little travelled around 35 hours in six small boxes in the cargo hold of the aircraft. Following a few hours' stopover in Singapore's Changi, they landed in Calcutta at 10.40pm on Monday.
"The mice were handed over to the IIT officials and were taken to Kharagpur (around 130km from Calcutta) in a temperature-controlled van," an airport official said on Tuesday.
Before boarding the flight in New York, they had travelled almost 700km from Maine in a similar temperature-controlled vehicle.
On board the flight, the special passengers fed on blocks of nutritional gels. "The blocks contain all essential nutrients and also moisture to keep them hydrated," an official of the Jackson Laboratory told Metro over the phone from Bar Harbour, Maine.
The laboratory did not keep water in containers in the boxes to prevent the possibility of the mice being drowned.
The mice were packed in specially-designed plastic boxes - 18-inch long, 11-inch wide and 5-inch high.
03/06/15 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph
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The 12 mice flew around 13,000km from New York and are now at IIT Kharagpur - not to attend any science conference but to be part of a research on neurological diseases.
Bred in Jackson Laboratory, Maine, in the US, the cousins of Stuart Little travelled around 35 hours in six small boxes in the cargo hold of the aircraft. Following a few hours' stopover in Singapore's Changi, they landed in Calcutta at 10.40pm on Monday.
"The mice were handed over to the IIT officials and were taken to Kharagpur (around 130km from Calcutta) in a temperature-controlled van," an airport official said on Tuesday.
Before boarding the flight in New York, they had travelled almost 700km from Maine in a similar temperature-controlled vehicle.
On board the flight, the special passengers fed on blocks of nutritional gels. "The blocks contain all essential nutrients and also moisture to keep them hydrated," an official of the Jackson Laboratory told Metro over the phone from Bar Harbour, Maine.
The laboratory did not keep water in containers in the boxes to prevent the possibility of the mice being drowned.
The mice were packed in specially-designed plastic boxes - 18-inch long, 11-inch wide and 5-inch high.
03/06/15 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph
