Forrest's mouse

Forrest's mouse, also called the desert short-tailed mouse (Leggadina forresti), is a small rodent of the family Muridae that lives across the arid and semi-arid interior of Australia, from eastern Western Australia to central Queensland and the Barkly Tableland. Adults weigh roughly 15 to 25 grams, with a thickset body, a broad blunt muzzle, small ears and a short thick tail, and pale yellow-brown to greyish fawn fur over white underparts. It was first described by Oldfield Thomas in 1906 from a specimen taken at Alexandria Station in the Northern Territory. A nocturnal, mostly solitary animal, it shelters by day in grass nests and shallow burrows, eats mainly seeds along with insects, spiders and fungi, and breeds most in winter and spring. It is assessed as least concern, though grazing, feral predators and altered fire regimes are named as pressures.