South East African vlei rat

The South East African vlei rat (Otomys auratus) is a rodent of the family Muridae and the vlei rat genus Otomys, recorded in Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe by Mammal Diversity Database. R. C. Wroughton described it in 1906 as a subspecies of Otomys irroratus from Vredefort in the northern Free State, and later molecular work, notably by Engelbrecht and colleagues in 2011, showed it to be a distinct species, although Mammal Diversity Database notes that it likely represents multiple species. The Handbook of the Mammals of the World describes a large, robust rat with a large blunt head, short tail and shaggy olive-brown to cinnamon-brown fur, measuring 133 to 202 millimetres head and body and weighing 63 to 211 grams. It lives in montane and submontane grasslands, typically in wetlands with long rank grass, and mainly eats grasses, sometimes the soft bark of pine saplings in forest plantations. It is typically crepuscular, builds runways in grass, and is solitary and aggressive. Females are polyestrous with three to four births a year of one to five young after five to six weeks of gestation. Mammal Diversity Database lists it as Near Threatened, and the Handbook notes it is regionally near threatened in South Africa.