Southern multimammate mouse

The southern multimammate mouse, also called the southern African mastomys (Mastomys coucha), is a rodent of the family Muridae that is endemic to southern Africa, with records from Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It takes its name from the female, which can carry 8 to 12 pairs of mammae where most mouse species have five. It is nocturnal and an ecological generalist, living in dry and moist grassland, dry and moist shrubland and semidesert karoo, and it eats both plant and animal food, resorting to cannibalism when resources are severely short. Because it copes well with drought, fire and overgrazing, its presence may indicate the condition of an ecosystem. It looks almost identical to the Natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) living in the same places, and the two are separated reliably only by chromosome counts or DNA sequencing, a confusion that left many laboratory colonies derived from one originally misidentified stock. The species is bred as an outbred research animal, notably as a model for papillomavirus infection and for the filarial parasite Brugia malayi, and is also kept as a feeder animal and pet.