The fact that they had been bred by ‘rat fanciers’ for hundreds of years allowed for diverse populations of an animal while the public held far less sentiment for these rodents than they did for dogs and cats. Because of social allowance, Little was able to take new ideas of ‘pure genetic strains’ merging from plant genetics as well as work with Drosophila and run with them. The idea of inbreeding to achieve this goal of a ‘pure strain’ in mice was one that may have created a negative response to the fertility of the mice thus discontinuing the strain.