Hopping mouse

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Hopping mouse
Temporal range: Late Pliocene - Recent
Notomys fuscus Imported from ALA on 14 january 2020.jpg
Dusky hopping mouse (Notomys fuscus)
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Muridae
Tribe: Hydromyini
Genus: Notomys
Lesson, 1842
Type species
Dipus mitchelli [1]
Species
Notomys alexis
Notomys amplus
Notomys aquilo
Notomys cervinus
Notomys fuscus
Notomys longicaudatus
Notomys macrotis
Notomys magnus
Notomys mitchellii
Notomys mordax
Notomys robustus

A hopping mouse is any of about ten different Australian native mice in the genus Notomys. They are rodents, not marsupials, and their ancestors are thought to have arrived from Asia about 5 million years ago.

Contents

All are brown or fawn, fading to pale grey or white underneath, have very long tails and, as the common name implies, well-developed hind legs. Half of the hopping mouse species have become extinct since European colonisation. The primary cause is probably predation from introduced foxes or cats, coupled with competition for food from introduced rabbits and hoofed mammals. A hopping mouse's primary diet is seeds. An Australian hopping mouse can concentrate urine to as high as 10,000 mOsm/L (10-20 times higher than a human). This allows it to survive in the desert without drinking water.

Species

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. Wilson, D. E.; Reeder, D. M., eds. (2005). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC   62265494.
  2. Vakil, Vikram; Cramb, Jonathan; Price, Gilbert J.; Webb, Gregory E.; Louys, Julien (2023-10-02). "Conservation implications of a new fossil species of hopping-mouse, Notomys magnus sp. nov. (Rodentia: Muridae), from the Broken River Region, northeastern Queensland". Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. 47 (4): 590–601. doi:10.1080/03115518.2023.2210192. ISSN   0311-5518.
  3. Vakil, Vikram; Cramb, Jonathan; Price, Gilbert; Louys, Julien; Stanisic, John; Webb, Gregory E. (2025-01-16). "Subfossils suggest worse-than-realised losses of small-bodied mammals in northern Australia". Wildlife Research. 52 (1). doi:10.1071/WR24149. ISSN   1448-5494.

Bibliography