Pseudomys – Australian mice

A whole cast of small, often very cute rodents that most people mistake for ordinary house mice—until you look closer. They’re found across Australia and New Guinea and are among the few land-dwelling placental mammals that reached Australia without humans bringing them. As a group, they’re incredibly varied. Many are soft grey-brown with pale bellies and big dark eyes, but there are also smoky slate-grey species, chestnut-backed species, and ridiculously long-tailed ones like the long-tailed mouse. Their tails are usually as long as or longer than the body, used like a balancing pole when they climb and scramble through grass, shrubs, or rocks.

One of the coolest things about them is how they’ve spread into almost every habitat Australia has to offer. As a group they live in everything from wet Tasmanian rainforest and coastal heath, through open woodlands and grasslands, all the way out to red-sand deserts and stony plains. Most species are nocturnal: they spend the day tucked away in burrows, tunnels, rock crevices, or dense ground cover, then emerge after dark to forage. Some are burrow engineers, digging multi-entrance tunnels and nesting chambers; the pebble-mound mice are especially odd, building mounds of carefully collected stones around their burrow entrances like tiny rock gardens. Others, like the long-tailed mouse, weave runways under moss and litter on damp forest floors.

Their diets are just as diverse. Desert species such as the sandy inland mouse rely heavily on seeds and green plant bits, but also snap up invertebrates when they can, making them flexible omnivores in a boom-and-bust world. Coastal and forest species mix seeds, leaves, fungi, and insects; some, like the New Holland mouse and plains mouse, are very seed-focused but still take some bugs. A few are real specialists on seasonally abundant foods like underground fungi (truffles) or post-fire regrowth in heath.