Mammals of the WorldHerb Field Mouse
Apodemus uralensis
- Order
- Rodentia
- Family
- Muridae
- Genus
- Apodemus
- IUCN status
- LC
- Distribution
- Czech Republic|Austria|Poland|Slovakia|Hungary|Croatia|Serbia|Bulgaria|Romania|Moldova|Ukraine|Belarus|Lithuania|Latvia|Estonia|Russia|Georgia|Armenia|Azerbaijan|Turkey|Iran|Kazakhstan|Kyrgyzstan|Tajikistan|Afghanistan?|Pakistan?|Uzbekistan?|Mongolia?
- Realm
- Palearctic
Other names: Pygmy Field Mouse|Ural Field Mouse
About this species
- Size
- Head and body 8.5–10.2cm; tail 6.4–9.7cm
- Weight
- 12–26g
- Range
- Eurasia
The herb field mouse has a head-and-body length of 85–102 millimetres, a tail of 64–97 millimetres and a weight of 12–26 grams, with hind feet of 17–22 millimetres and ears of 14–16 millimetres. The upper fur of western populations is described as grey-brown without a yellow component, while Asian populations can include animals with lighter sandy or red-brown upperparts. In all populations there is a clear boundary to the white underside, which has a light grey sheen, and the tail is brown above and whitish below. (German Wikipedia, general species account)
This rodent of the Old World mice occurs in Eurasia. For a long time it was treated as a subspecies of the wood mouse, but molecular and morphological studies in the 1990s and early 2000s led current taxonomic works to recognise the smaller form as a species. The name Apodemus microps, once used for western populations, is now a junior synonym. (German Wikipedia, general species account)
Description: Wildlife of Mongolia guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)