Long-tailed ground squirrel

The long-tailed ground squirrel or Eversmann's souslik (Urocitellus undulatus) is a rodent in the squirrel family Sciuridae, found in China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, from southern Siberia and the Altai to Manchuria. It has a compact, low-slung body, short legs and a long bushy tail, with a body up to 315 millimetres long and a tail up to 160 millimetres. The back is brown with small dark spots, the underparts are a paler ochre-brown, and the tail is barred in brown and black with a light edge and pale tip. It lives in submontane steppes up to 3,100 metres, plains, meadows, forest edges and farmland, in colonies with labyrinthine burrows. It wakes from hibernation in March and the young are born about a month later in broods of five to eight. Before hibernation begins in October it stores up to six kilograms of vegetation and grain in its burrows, and it eats green vegetation, seeds, insects, bulbs and roots.