Mount Chercher brush-furred rat

The Mount Chercher brush-furred rat (Lophuromys chercherensis) is a small rodent of the family Muridae, one of the brush-furred mice, and it is found only in Ethiopia. It was formally described in 2007 by Leonid Lavrenchenko, Walter and Erik Verheyen, Jan Hulselmans and Herwig Leirs in a morphometric and genetic study of the Ethiopian Lophuromys flavopunctatus species complex, a paper that named three new species with 70 chromosomes. The type specimen, catalogued as ZMMU S-168902, was collected in the Chercher Mountains of eastern Ethiopia at about 2,700 metres above sea level, some 22 kilometres northeast of Hirna. The Mammal Diversity Database places the species in the Afrotropical realm and records its IUCN Red List status as Endangered.