Warning: satire ahead.

TOKYO – In another example of how scientists will use just about any rationale available to them to justify fucking with small, captive rodents, researchers at Tokyo’s Keio University showed a bunch of mice videos of other mice sniffing each other, copulating and fighting. The goal: to see which videos the lab mice preferred.

To hear the aberrant Japanese scientists tell it, the Keio lab mice chose fighting videos over fucking videos by a slim margin. The mice chose both the fucking and fighting videos over the sniffing-fetish videos by a much larger margin.

While media wonks have been quick to seize on the experiment’s outcome as proof mice prefer violent movies over pornography, some members of the scientific community advise caution and skepticism pending further research.

“There is a debate over whether time spent with a specific cue is a good proxy for preference,” said Barbara König of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “Mice might just need longer to gain information on whether the objects signal any kind of danger.”

Another possibility is the Keio researchers merely showed their mice “poor examples of rodent erotica,” according to Dr. Daniel Kurtz, a research psychiatrist at the Werner Academy in Doomstadt, Latveria.

“As with any pornographic genre, there is a tremendous variation in quality and the level of titillation the viewer experiences from one mouse porn video to the next,” Kurtz said. “We also haven’t been told anything about the sex of these mice-viewers. If they showed nothing but completely plot-free mouse gonzo to an entirely female audience, it comes as no surprise the mice didn’t have much interest in the videos. We might get a completely different result by showing them erotica in which the female rodents are more empowered, or even clearly dominant over the males, as they are in Rat Peggers of Prague, for example.”

The quality of the action videos used in the experiment is another “unknown variable of great significance,” Kurtz noted.

“We need to know if this was a cheddar-to-cheddar comparison, so to speak,” he said. “Were these mice watching a sophisticated, complex and nuanced action film like Rodent Ronin, or was this more of a low-budget, direct-to-DVD affair, akin to Flight of Furry? The answer to this question potentially changes the whole interpretation of the viewing behavior observed in the clinical setting.”

Kurtz said he has much more confidence in the experiment’s conclusion regarding the sniffing videos, saying “fart porn has never done it for me, either.”

“In nearly any context, watching animals sniff each other is just a lot less engaging than watching them fuck or fight,” Kurtz said. “Although, on the other hand, I suppose I’d rather pay $50 to watch Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm smell each other for any amount of time, than pay $75 to see Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather bounce around a bit while glaring at each other for 45 minutes.”

According to Christopher McManus, a random man waiting on line at a London motor vehicle office, there could be an explanation for the Keio mice behavior unlikely to be explored by secular scientists — an element more mystical and spiritual in nature.

“Maybe the majority of the mice are strong in their faith,” McManus said. “A mouse of God would know he’s not to uncover the nakedness of other mice, while the Bible doesn’t say anything about it being a sin to watch other mice tear out each other’s throats.

“I suppose maybe if there was a crawfish standing in between them, the mice would need to be very careful not to accidentally eat it during their battle,” McManus added, “but other than that, I think mice fights are just fine by the Lord as a form of visual entertainment. Better than men’s tennis, anyway, which I’m pretty sure is an abomination, even if it doesn’t say so in Leviticus.”

Dr. Otto Kronsteig, one of Kurtz’s colleagues in Latveria, said he’s planning to conduct a new experiment similar to the Keio research. The new project may put to rest some of the questions left behind by the Japanese researchers.

“We’re going to have a group of rats watch various iterations of Batman performances to see if they have an observable preference for Adam West, Christian Bale, Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer,” Kronsteig said, adding the rats will not be required to view any footage of Ben Affleck in the role, because Kronsteig wants the scientific community and the general public to know his team’s lab is “steadfastly against that sort of unjustifiably cruel vivisection.”