Aust. Geographic: Here are 7 of our favourite native rodents for you to gush over
BY TIM LOW |APRIL 09, 2018
Australia’s native rats and mice are as worthy of love and attention as the continent’s better-known marsupials. Here, we list some of our favourites.
Spinifex hopping mouse
Notomys alexis
After drenching rains, outback Australia’s dunes come alive at night with spinifex hopping-mice feasting on seeds. They scurry about like typical mice until a predator appears, when they bound away on long hind limbs, like tiny kangaroos, making for the nearest burrow or shrub.
Well adapted for desert life, they sleep by day in burrows and can survive without drinking, obtaining all their water from their food. Australia once had 10 hopping-mouse species: five are now extinct and two are rare. Bucking the trend, the spinifex hopping-mouse remains common.
Rodents are an important food source for birds of prey, snakes, dingoes and other predators. But there was much surprise in 2015 when some salmon catfish taken from the Ashburton River in WA were found to have spinifex hopping-mice in their stomachs. It was suggested that hopping-mouse burrows on the river bank had collapsed into the water.
More:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2018/04/australian-native-rodents
= new reply since forum marked as read
I've had both a pet mouse (named after FDR 
) and a pet rat (rescued from the psych lab at college). 
It can sure hop!
