It is an unusually long and dense harvest mouse for its genre, a trait that gives it a name and that could be related to the cooler temperatures of the Mexican plateau where it lives, very different from the warm areas that occupy most of its relatives. Like the rest of harvest mice, it builds small spherical nests of grass torn, often elevated over the vegetation, taking advantage of its partially prensil tail to climb between thin stems. It lives in high mountain pastures in central Mexico, a habitat that has suffered a considerable transformation by overpastoreo and agricultural conversion in the last decades. It is one of the several endemic harvest mice of the high central Mexican lands whose biology, despite the familiarity of the genre in the continent, remains little known in this
Small rodent, notably long and dense fur for its genre, of gray brown tone, with upper incisives longitudinally sourced, a distinctive feature of the whole genus of harvest mice. It differs from other harvest mice from the center of Mexico by that long and dense fur, and by its restricted distribution to the central plateau.
Small footprint, barely 1-1.3 cm, with 4 front fingers and 5 rear fingers. Small and lengthy feces, 3-4 mm, left scattered by paths between pasture vegetation. Builds spherical nests of tear grass, 8-10 cm in diameter, often elevated over dense vegetation, supported by several intertwined stems, a very characteristic construction of the genre.
High mountain pastry, generally above 2000 m of altitude. Distributed by a zone of the central plateau of Mexico.
Granivorous, it feeds mainly on grass seed, complemented with occasional invertebrates from the pastures of altiplano.
Solitary and nighttime, it builds elevated spherical nests on the dense vegetation of the pasture, a behavior shared with the rest of the crop mice of its genre.
Its populations are considered to be declining due to the transformation of the high mountain pasture that it depends on, degraded increasingly by overpastorage and conversion to land of cultivation in the central Mexican plateau.
Over-pastorage and degradation of high mountain pasture by extensive livestock, and conversion to cultivated land in some areas of the central plateau of Mexico.
See all species accounts for rodents · Full species index
Mammaling is a free app for logging the mammals you find. You record a sighting in a moment — even if it's just a track — your life list grows, and the record becomes available to scientific and conservation projects.
It runs on your phone with nothing to install. If you like, it adds to your home screen like any other app.
Open Mammaling