Nolthenius's long-tailed climbing mouse

Nolthenius's long-tailed climbing mouse (Vandeleuria nolthenii) is a small arboreal rodent in the family Muridae that lives only in the highlands of Sri Lanka, where it is also known as the Sri Lanka highland tree mouse and, in Sinhala, as podi-gas-miya. It is named after A. C. Tutein-Nolthenius, an amateur zoologist who collected the first specimens in 1929. The body is 8 to 9 centimetres long with a tail of 12 to 13 centimetres. The fur is dark reddish brown above, darker on the back, long, soft and dense, and grey below, with a dark brown face, tail and ears and long black whiskers beside shorter silvery ones. The mouse is nocturnal and is confined to montane evergreen forests between about 1,320 and 2,130 metres in the Central Province, so its distribution is restricted and fragmented.