Heath mouse

The heath mouse, Pseudomys shortridgei, is a stocky Australian rodent in the subfamily Murinae, the Old World rats and mice. Oldfield Thomas described it in 1907 from material collected by Guy Shortridge in Western Australia. Adults weigh 55 to 90 grams and have a blunt, Roman-nosed face, grizzled grey-brown fur and a bicoloured tail. It eats grass shoots, seeds and the fruiting bodies of underground fungi, and it is active mainly in the morning and from late afternoon into the evening. Two separate populations survive, in heathland of western Victoria with a record from Kangaroo Island, and in scrubland of southwest Western Australia. It was thought extinct for decades and was rediscovered in Victoria in 1961 and in Western Australia in 1987. The International Union for Conservation of Nature rates it Near Threatened, with a declining trend and about 11,000 individuals estimated in 2012, and altered fire regimes are thought to have driven its decline.