Obligatory disclaimer: real life still sucks. Snow still
comes, even though it’s mid-April, and the lockdown continues until the middle
of May at least. My computer is not doing so well either, so let us talk about
something else – mice.
No, not computer mice, but the real life mice in whose honor
the computer devices are named. Ergo, what about them?
The term ‘mouse’ is not very scientific; neither is ‘rat’,
though technically speaking, a ‘rat’ is bigger than a ‘mouse’ is. As for mice
themselves, they are a mixed bag, which consists of…
…'True mice', aka rodents from the Muridae family – the so-called
‘true mice’. Most of those rodents live in the Old World rather than the New,
and by the rodent standard they consist of those that humans call ‘mice’, ‘rats’
and ‘gerbils’ to begin with. They feature the house mouse, the Eurasian field
mice, and also – the Eurasian harvester mouse, one of the smallest rodents
ever.
Closely related to the ‘true mice’ are several species of ‘mice’-named
rodents, (such as the American harvester mouse), which, however, belong to the
Cricetidae family instead. Most of the Cricetid rodents are identified as
hamsters, lemmings, voles… the ‘mice’ from this family live primarily in New
World instead. Murids and Cricetids are close relatives, both belong to the
Myomorpha suborder of rodents, but they belong to two different families all
the same.
The rest of ‘mice’ look much more exotic than the rodents
that we usually associated the name of ‘mouse’ with – mice do make popular
pets, and even more popular lab animals slash subjects – real life sucks not
just for people, but for animals as well. Firstly, there are the ‘mice’ from
the Heteromyidae family – these rodents are known as kangaroo mice and rats,
and also pocket and spiny pocket mice, and they all look to be slightly more…derived
than the ‘ordinary mice & rats’ do. Instead, physically, they appear to be more
like miniature kangaroos of Australia instead, although, yes, pocket and spiny
pocket mice do look mouse-like, but they all live in the wild, often away from
humans, so people aren’t aware of them as much as they are of the kangaroo mice
and rats, (and yes, we’ll get to the kangaroos soon as well).
Secondly, there are the flying mice. Now, in such languages,
such as Russian, the term ‘flying mouse’ is the local analogue to the English ‘bat’, (remember, we've talked about them earlier as well?), which does look like a mouse with wings, but the ‘true flying mouse’ are more
like flying squirrels; if the aforementioned pocket mice and co. belong to the
Castriomorpha subfamily, which also features the beavers, (while the muskrat is
just an oversized aquatic vole, but that is a different story), then the flying
mice are actually ‘scaly-tailed squirrels’ or ‘scaly-tailed flying squirrels’.
They, too, belong to a separate suborder – the Anomaluramorpha, and their
closest relative is the African springhare, which looks like a kangaroo rat…or
just a kangaroo.
This, in turn, brings us to Australia proper – this small
continent features not only true rodents, both native and introduced, (which
includes the house mouse from the aforementioned ‘true mice’ group), but also
the so-called marsupial mice, which aren’t rodents at all, but are marsupials,
just as the kangaroos are. Only, while the kangaroos feature the biggest modern
marsupials – the red kangaroo, the two greys and the antilopine kangaroo, the
marsupial mice are some of the smallest marsupials, and they belong to the
Dasyuridae family, which features not only them, but also the infamous
Tasmanian devil, and the quolls, which are marsupial ‘cats’, or rather ‘martens’,
(real martens are cousins of weasels, FYI). The marsupial mice themselves are
carnivores, (while their rodent counterparts are more herbivorous; the flying
mice, which are one of the genera of the scaly-tailed squirrels are supposedly
food specialists, even), and behave more like shrews rather than true mice, (let
us keep the rats out of this equation, shall we?). Consequently, these days,
the terms ‘marsupial shrew’ and ‘marsupial mouse’ isn’t used much anymore; the
terms ‘antechinus’, ‘dunnart’, and the like instead…
…Well, I must admit – this was informative. I never knew
that there were so many different mice, marsupial and otherwise, and that they had even more relatives among both placental mammals and marsupials. They had certainly
distracted me from the realization that real life still sucks and that COVID-19
is still going strong through the planet. How about you? Any comments? All
criticisms are welcome, and this is for now, see you all soon!
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