11 September 2023

Identification Trouble

Good morning, evening, night, or afternoon mammal watching community, I have a question. How well do you know your small mammals. Recently I went to a getting to know the neighbors barbecue, and on this barbecue trip I saw a small rodent like mammal. I, like any sane person would do, spent most of my night trying to find out what that small mammal was. Despite spending most of the night I was allowed on a screen I could not find out what species it was. So I’m calling to you for help, it would be extremely kind if you answered this call. Here’s the description. It appeared to be 6.5 inches long from head to body, 10 including the tail. It had dark grey-black fur and could climb very well. Do not know how that will help you but if it does for some people, why not include it. Sadly there are no really concerning features about the species, it was to fast for my eyes. The species was spotted in a duck coop in Harare, Zimbabwe. Thank you to anyone who responds, and a especially thank you to a kind mammalwatcher named Ruben who commented on the original post which helped me a lot with making this better post.

Sincerely, Moses Swanson-Mwamasika

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Post author

Moses Swanson the XVI
Born to the son of a Minnesotan mammalwatcher and a Tanzanian mother. I have lived around the world and have been mammalwatching in 8 countries. Currently my favorite sighting being a tie between the African wild dog and Sanje mangabey.
Post Views: 532

5 Comments

  • 11 September 2023
    Jon Hall

    Hi Moses, sorry about the posting trouble. I have to approve every post – even if you edit a post it comes back to me for approval. Annoying I know (for both of us!). It just takes me a bit of time. YOur revised post is now visible again. Hope someone can help

    • 11 September 2023
      Moses Swanson the XVI

      Its fine. It gave me a little heart attack when my revised took a while to load, but I’ll just have to get used to it. I’ll probably delete the posting trouble post when It loads.

  • 11 September 2023
    Moses Swanson the XVI

    Anyways be on the look out for a new trip report this month. My school is going on a trip to a safari park near Harare, hopefully I can find a new species on the trip.

  • 13 September 2023
    KyleFinn

    Hi Moses, it’s hard to say without a picture. It could be any number of small rodents: a juvenile pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei), a dormouse (Graphiurus sp) if it had a completely furred tail, woodland thicket rat (Grammomys dolichurus), maybe a acacia rat (but these have a rather obvious black mask around the eye/face)

  • 13 September 2023
    Moses Swanson the XVI

    Thank you so so much, with your help I found out what species it was. The species was a juvenile pouch rat. I considered it could be a pouch rat but I thought that they where to small to be pouched rat. I never considered that they could be juveniles, to my ignorance. The family that lived their say that you can hear them scurrying on the roof at night. Thank you so so much for narrowing it down and helping me identify the species?

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