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In an attempt to win a small court battle, PepsiCo, Mountain Dew’s parent company, has made a bizarre statement about mice dissolving in the drink before consumption. It’s exactly what it sounds like. One mouse allegedly didn’t fully dissolve in a can of the citrus drink, sending them to court.

Experts called in by PepsiCo’s lawyers offered an explanation for why it couldn’t be true: the Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse, turning it into a “jelly-like substance,” had it been in the can of fluid from the time of it’s bottling until the day the plaintiff opened it, 15 months later. However, countering experts say drink would still contain the dead mouse, which Pepsi has failed to deny. In addition, there is always that small percent of any statistic that shows otherwise. If 100 people eat pizza every day, there will still be at least a couple days when one of those people decides not to eat pizza. 

Forget about the legal disputes, is Mountain Dew crazy enough to dissolve mice carcasses? And what does that do to your intestines? Is Mountain Dew’s classic slogan “It’ll tickle your innards” the world’s most sickening understatement?

Even though no published studies have been done on how rapidly Mountain Dew dissolves mice, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the neon green soda can eat away teeth and bones in a matter of months and would likely do a number on a small rodent.

Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who has studied the effects of citric acid on bones and teeth, agrees with PepsiCo: “I think it is plausible that it could dissolve a mouse in a few months, but dissolving [the mouse] does not mean it will disappear, because you still have the collagen and the soft tissue part. It will be like rubber.”

Research shows that drinks such as Mountain Dew and Sprite erode tooth enamel around six times faster than colas such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. That’s because Coke and Pepsi contain phosphoric acid which gives it a tangy taste, while citrus drinks such as Mountain Dew and Sprite contain citric acid to do the same job.

When Fraunhofer’s teem soaked human molars in Mountain Dew for two weeks (a time period comparable to about 13 years of normal beverage exposure), they calculated the teeth lost more than 6 percent of it’s volume.  

Citric Acid in Mountain Dew would eat away a mouse’s bones in a similar manner as it erodes teeth, breaking down the chemical bonds that hold the tissue togeather by infiltrating them with positively charged particles and the acid can also “combine with calcium in the bones, taking it away quicker,” Ren stated.

Your stomach and intestines are built to withstand a variety of acidic digestive juices. For people with a healthy digestive tracks, a little extra acid from the drink, which passes through quickly, shouldn’t harm your stomach like it does your teeth. Mountain Dew does contain orange juice, however, it contains no vitamin C. You should minimize contact with teeth by taking large gulps rather than small frequent sips, then washing your mouth out with water. Or you could just use a straw.

An Illinois man sued Pepsi in 2009 after he claims he “spat out the soda to reveal a dead mouse,” he then sent the mouse to Pepsi, who destroyed the remains.