Vivacious gerbil

The vivacious gerbil, Gerbillus vivax, is a small desert rodent of the family Muridae, placed in the gerbil subfamily Gerbillinae and the subgenus Hendecapleura of the genus Gerbillus. Oldfield Thomas described it in 1902 under the name Dipodillus vivax from a specimen collected at Sehba in Libya, and Libya is the only country the Mammal Diversity Database lists for it, within the Palearctic realm. It is a medium-sized gerbil with ochre-buff upperparts lightly lined with browner hairs, a pure white belly and limbs, bare soles on the hindfeet and a long tail ending in a pencil of longer hairs. Its status as a species has been debated, because some authors folded it into Wagner's gerbil, the pleasant gerbil or the Balochistan gerbil, but the Mammal Diversity Database lists it as a valid living species and the Red List status there is Not Evaluated.