Ceratogaulus, a Miocene rodent known only from the Great Plains of North America, is the only known rodent ever to have horns.
The largest extinct rodent known, Josephoartegasia monesi, which lived three million years ago, was larger than a bull and weighed over a ton.
The prairie vole, a fuzzy rodent known for being monogamous, becomes a cheater under the influence of alcohol, researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This week in Australia, a tiny rodent known as the Bramble Cay melomys became the first mammal to go extinct because of climate change, The New York Times reports.
Some believe the animal was actually a coypu, or a South African rodent known as a "river rat," the Daily Mail reports.
NMRs are the longest-lived rodent known till now and their maximum lifespan can be up to thirty years [ 3].
The NMR is the longest lived rodent known, with a maximum lifespan of 32 years almost ten times longer than the mouse (Gorbunova, 2007).
In 14 generations, we produced mice in which relative tibia length exceeded that of rats, and was similar to that in Northern viscachas (Lagidium peruanum), a ~3 kg rabbit-like rodent known to hop in the rocky outcrops that form its habitat in Patagonia [ 49].
Under this selection regime, in Longshanks Line 1, it would take fewer than 100 generations to produce mice with body masses and tibia lengths roughly equivalent to kangaroo rats (Dipodomys merriami), a habitually bipedal desert rodent known for its hopping behavior [ 51, 52].
We modelled potential distribution maps for four species of rodents known to be reservoirs of the hantavirus disease.
