>>After all, we all know that men are simply large, two-legged rodents...
To be fair, rodents are the evolutionarily closest mammals to primates. That said, lab mice are very, *very* far from mice in the wild. I've heard researchers sometimes refer to them as 'mouse like objects'*. 'Lab' mice have, IMO a fairly interesting origin story: they started out as 'fancy' mice, bred for particular coat colors or curliness and when Mendel's pea-plant heredity work was rediscovered, they were used to see if the same principles applied to mammals. They've been used in labs ever since.
*the researchers I know like to joke around (e.g. "poor little drosophila melanogaster!" about fruit flies - another model organism), so the ones I know may not be representative. Also: as far as I know there have never been groups of people breeding 'fancy' fruit flies - but you never know.