Ash-grey mouse

The ash-grey mouse, Pseudomys albocinereus, is a rodent in the family Muridae that is found only in Southwest Australia. It is larger and more robust than the common house mouse, Mus musculus, with long soft mid-grey fur marked with patches of fawn and paler underparts, a colouring that matches its sandy habitat. It weighs about 15 to 40 grams, with a head and body length of 70 to 100 millimetres and a slightly longer tail. John Gould first described it in 1845, placing it in the genus Mus, and the type location is Moore's River in Western Australia. It is nocturnal and fossorial, foraging at night and living in deep burrows or in nests in leaf litter or hollow logs. Its omnivorous diet is mostly seeds and green vegetation with some arthropods. It prefers low heathland or scrubland on sandy soils, from Shark Bay to Israelite Bay, and it also lives on Bernier and Dorre Islands, where the population is named as the subspecies Pseudomys albocinereus squalorum.