African hamster
| African hamster | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the subfamily | ||||||||||||
| Mystromyinae | ||||||||||||
| Vorontsov , 1966 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Mystromys | ||||||||||||
| Wagner , 1841 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Mystromys albicaudatus | ||||||||||||
| ( Smith , 1834) |
The African hamster ( Mystromys albicaudatus ) is a species of rodent that, despite its name, is not assigned to hamsters . Another name for the animal is white tailed rat, and in fact, it's more rat-like than hamster-like.
African hamsters only live in South Africa and Lesotho . They have a head body length of 15 cm, plus a 7 cm tail. The fur is gray-brown on top and white on the underside. The habitat are grass savannahs and semi-deserts. During the day, the African hamster hides in crevices or other animals' burrows and comes out at night to look for seeds and other parts of plants.
As the African hamster's natural habitat is increasingly being replaced by grazing land, the population has decreased by 80% over the past few decades. Since 2003, the IUCN has therefore given the species the status "threatened".
Some fossil relatives from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of South Africa are known and today it is assumed that the African hamster is not closely related to the hamster, but rather belongs to the newly established family of the Nesomyidae as a distant relative of other purely African taxa . In most systematics it is carried out in its own subfamily Mystromyinae.
literature
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World. 2 volumes. 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD et al. 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .
Web links
- Mystromys albicaudatus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: Coetzee & Monadjem, 2004. Retrieved on 6 May, 2006.