Fear of mice and rats

Fear of mice and rats is one of the most common specific phobias. It goes by several names: musophobia, from the Greek word for mouse; murophobia, a coinage built on the taxonomic adjective murine, which refers to the family Muridae that includes mice and rats, and on the Latin word for a mouse or rat; and suriphobia, from the French word souris. As a phobia it is an unreasonable and disproportionate fear, and it is set apart from the reasonable concern about rodents contaminating or eating stored food, a worry that is probably shared by every time, place and culture where stored grain attracts them. The entry records how the phobia is named and defined, and it is not medical advice.