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| Maze |
 Title text: As a side effect of the research, mice are now the only known animals other than humans to have developed a Backrooms mythology. |
Explanation
This comic references the common task used to benchmark cognitive functioning in mice, speed of maze-solving. For example, if testing whether XYZ compound impairs mouse spatial reasoning (or something like that), scientists will use the compound on n mice and not use the compound on n mice, then compare the average maze-solving speed between the two groups.
The joke here is that they have been using mice in mazes for 100 years for the main purpose of finding a mouse that can solve the maze, and they are having a press conference because they finally found one. Instead, of course, having the mouse solve the maze is not the point of the experiment; the are simply using the mouse's performance as a convenient benchmark to test some other variable.
The title text references a fictional liminal space called the The Backrooms, which is known for being infinite and maze-like. In 2026, a film was released based on this "mythology". In this case, relative to a mouse, a moderately-sized maze for a human would be labyrinthian to a mouse, thereby creating the impression of an infinite maze. It is common for many human "mythologies" or stories to be based on a fear of the unknown or of extrapolations of real phenomena, in this case the Backrooms being based on the unsettling phenomenon of liminal spaces and the familiar human fear of getting lost in an unfamiliar place. The title text humorously implies that mice have also developed their own Backrooms-like "mythology" because of their own experiences traversing mazes. Of course, mice have not been known to do this in real life[citation needed].
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