The secret life of the harvest mouse: cute pictures by Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert

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These pictures give a rare insight into the secret lives of tiny harvest mice (Micromys minutus). Photographers Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert spent one year photographing the adorable little creatures in a project that saw them released from captivity into the wild

A harvest mouse balancing between two stalks of grass in a field in Alsace, France

Waiting patiently in meadows and reed beds close to their home in Alsace, France, the pair were able to capture some extremely cute moments

A harvest mouse seems to look directly into the camera while balancing on ears of wheat

From the studio - where the pair documented tiny newborns and their first few weeks of life - to the great outdoors where all of the 30 mice were eventually released, the pictures take viewers through a variety of events faced by the mice

A female harvest mouse and her young (aged 5 days) in a nest

Jean-Louis said: "All of the harvest mice came originally from captivity and were eventually released them into a field where we continued to photograph them, always carefully choosing a suitable habitat where we knew they could survive

A harvest mouse female regurgitating to feed her cubs (aged 10 days old)

"We also wanted to show the behaviour of the animals during maternity, but we wouldn't have been able to get this in the wild without disturbing the mother and there was a danger a wild mother might have abandoned them. Instead we shot the maternal behaviour in a studio before releasing the mice once the babies were mature enough for the wild.

To demonstrate how mice often take to the water in the wet meadows they inhabit, 55-year-old Jean-Louis and 46-year-old Marie-Luce gave one of their subjects a dip in a mouse-sized aquarium before releasing it into the wild