Asia Minor ground squirrel

The Asia Minor ground squirrel, Spermophilus xanthoprymnus, also called the Anatolian souslik or Anatolian ground squirrel, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae found in Turkey, Iran and Armenia. Its scientific name roughly means seed-lover with yellow underparts. It has a rounded body and head with short limbs and tail; males, 25 to 29 centimetres long and 235 to 490 grams, are noticeably larger than females at 23 to 28 centimetres and 170 to 410 grams. The fur is a fairly uniform buff, ranging from greyish to dark brown, with narrow white rings around the eyes and a white patch on the chin and throat. It lives on steppe and alpine meadows from 800 to 2,900 metres across central and eastern Anatolia, eats seeds, leaves and shoots, and rarely needs to drink. A diurnal burrower, it hibernates from about September to March and breeds once a year after emerging, with litters of three to nine young. Fossils date to the early Pleistocene, and the lineage split from the ancestors of the European souslik and the Taurus ground squirrel around five million years ago. Because it eats farm grain it is treated as a pest and poisoned, and agricultural expansion cut populations by 20 to 25 percent in the first decade of this century, leading to a Near Threatened listing in 2009.