Mice and rats | Muridae

Muizen en ratten | Ratones y ratas

Slender rodents with a pointed muzzle, large eyes and ears, and a long scaly, thinly haired tail that keeps the balance and sheds heat. The cheekteeth carry three rows of cusps side by side, suited to seed as much as to insects, and in most species the menu is broad and opportunistic; that is what has carried the house mouse and both rats to every place where people live. The hind feet are long and the animals jump well; the harvest mouse climbs the stems with a prehensile tail and weaves a spherical nest among them. A large part of the family within this area is desert-dwelling: gerbils and jirds with long hind legs, furred soles and a tufted tail, which do not drink, plug their burrows by day and live on stores of seed. In the spiny mice the back fur is hardened into stiff spines, the skin tears away when the animal is seized, and the young are born furred and open-eyed.