A prehensile tail is the tail of an animal that has adapted to grasp or hold objects. Fully prehensile tails can be used to hold and manipulate objects, and in particular to aid arboreal creatures in finding and eating food in the trees. If the tail cannot be used for this it is considered only partially prehensile; such tails are often used to anchor an animal's body to dangle from a branch, or as an aid for climbing. The term prehensile means "able to grasp".
The Old World rats and mice, part of the subfamily Murinae in the family Muridae, comprise at least 519 species. Members of this subfamily are called murines. In terms of species richness, this subfamily is larger than all mammal families except the Cricetidae and Muridae, and is larger than all mammal orders except the bats and the remainder of the rodents.
The Mount Kahuzi climbing mouse is a rodent found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is listed as a critically endangered species due to illegal logging; it is also threatened by fire. Only two specimens have ever been found. Both were found within 100m of each other on Mount Kahuzi. Its body length is 50-100mm and its tail length is 65-132mm. Its habitat is tropical forests, and to navigate these forests it may use its semi-prehensile tail to hold on to tree branches. Its markings are brownish on the top and white to yellow on its underside, with strongly dark rings around its eyes. As with other Dendromus, it has three well defined toes.
Mice in the genus Dendromus are commonly referred to as African climbing mice or tree mice, although these terms are often used to describe all members of the subfamily Dendromurinae. The genus is currently restricted to sub-Saharan Africa, but fossils classified in the genus have been found from Late Miocene deposits in Arabia and Europe.
Chiruromys is a genus of Old World mouse that is restricted to New Guinea and the nearby islands of Goodenough, Fergusson, and Normanby.
The prehensile-tailed rat is a species of rodent that can be found in New Guinea and Australia; it occurs in the tropical rainforest of Queensland.
The northern birch mouse is a small rodent about 5 to 8 cm long, weighing 5 to 13 g. It lives in northern Europe and Asia in forest and marsh zones.
Champion's tree mouse is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found only in Papua New Guinea.
The large tree mouse is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found on the island of New Guinea.
The chestnut tree mouse is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
The gray-bellied tree mouse is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found only in Papua New Guinea.
The Molaccan prehensile-tailed rat is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found only in the Halmahera Islands of Indonesia, including Morotai, Halmahera, and Batjan islands.
The black-tailed tree rat, also called black-tailed acacia rat or black-tailed thallomys,, is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, where its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry shrubland. It is both nocturnal and arboreal and makes bulky nests in the trees, often acacias, where it feeds on leaves and buds.
The grayish or gray mouse opossum is a diminutive species of opossum in the family Didelphidae, endemic to Mexico. It is the sole species of its monotypic genus, Tlacuatzin.
The prehensile-tailed hutia is a small, furry, rat-like mammal found only in forests on Cuba. It is the only member of the genus Mysateles. It climbs and lives in trees where it eats only leaves, and it is threatened by habitat loss. The prehensile-tailed hutia is a member of the hutia subfamily (Capromyinae), a group of rodents native to the Caribbean that are mostly endangered or extinct.
The Armenian birch mouse is a species of rodent in the family Sminthidae.
The D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago pogonomys, also known as the D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago tree mouse, is a species of prehensile-tailed rat from the family Muridae that is endemic to Papua New Guinea. It was once considered to be a subspecies of the Large Tree Mouse. Deforestation is posing a threat to the species, but it has been suspected that the species has some degree of tolerance towards disturbance of its habitat.
Hydromyini is a very large, diverse tribe of muroid rodents in the subfamily Murinae. They are the dominant native rodents in Australasia and one of only two native rodent groups there, the other being the R. fuscipes group of the genus Rattus in the tribe Rattini. They are also found in parts of Southeast Asia.
