jerboa

A bizarre creature dubbed the Mickey Mouse of the desert has been filmed in its natural habitat for the first time as part of a project to save it from extinction.

Giant ears and kangaroo legs lend the long-eared jerboa a comic quality and conservationists are anxious to save it from a tragic end.

A scientific expedition to the Gobi desert in Mongolia has now succeeded in capturing video footage of the nocturnal and little-known animal.

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Video: Mickey Mouse of the desert
"The long-eared jerboa is a bit like the Mickey Mouse of the desert, cute and comic in equal measure," said Dr Jonathon Baille of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

"It's an extraordinary animal that looks as if it's been designed by committee - kangaroo legs, snowshoe feet, huge ears and a pig's nose.

"It represents millions of years of evolutionary history and while it looks like a small rodent it's very, very distinct. There's no other animal of its type."

It lives in the deserts of Mongolia and China where it is thought to use its enormous ears to pinpoint and catch insects in the dark. The ears are so big that they are about 35 per cent longer than its head.

Specially adapted hairs on their elongated feet make the jerboas even more unusual and appear to help spread the animal's weight to allow it to hop confidently over shifting sands just as snowshoes make it easier to walk on snow.

Long-eared jerboas are described as "mouse-sized kangaroos" because of the way they jump on two legs instead of scampering on four.

The stretch feet enable it to leap upwards and other jerboa species have been found to be able to leap more than three feet into the air.

Jumping and hopping are assumed to have evolved as a technique to evade predators, which can include wildcats, lynx, grey wolves and Pallas's Cat.

It was identified earlier this year by the ZSL as one of the 100 most evolutionarily distinct and endangered mammals in the world.

Being one of the least understood creatures scientists selected it as one of their ten priority species for conservation under the Edge (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) project.

As part of conservation effort to learn more about the long-eared jerboa, Euchoreutes naso, and highlight its plight zoologists were keen to get the first video footage of the endangered animal in the wild.

During a recent ZSL expedition to the Gobi desert in Mongolia to study the species and learn more of its needs and habits, scientists managed to capture it on film.

Dr Baillie, who led the expedition, added: "They can be quite agressive little creatures. They have a good bite and for their size can defend themselves well. We wore thick gloves when handling them."

As part of efforts to safeguard the creature's longterm future ZSL and Mongolian academics have begun a programme
Jerboa
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Jerboa
Fossil range: Middle Miocene - Recent


Jaculus jaculus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Superfamily: Dipodoidea

Family: Dipodidae
Fischer de Waldheim, 1817

Genera
10 genera in 5 subfamilies

Jerboas are the members of the family Dipodidae; they are small jumping desert rodents of Asia and northern Africa that resemble mice with a long tufted tail and very long hind legs. The small forelegs are not used for locomotion. In general, Asiatic jerboas have five toes on their hind feet and African jerboas have three; the shapes of their ears vary widely between species. Jerboa fur is long, soft and silky. Diet varies considerably: some are specialist seed, insect, or plant eaters, others are omnivores.

The English word jerboa may have been derived from the similar sounding Arabic word jerbu'a (جربوع) or the Hebrew word yarboa (יַרְבּוֹעַ) which denote this animal.

The ancestors of the modern jerboas probably separated from the more generalised rodents about 8 million years ago on the arid plains of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, and then spread to Europe and northern Africa. With the exception of Europe, where they died out, this remains their current range.

Their ability to hop is presumed to be an adaptation to help them escape from predators, and perhaps to assist with the longer journeys a desert-living animal must make to find food. Although jerboas are not closely related to the hopping mice of Australia or the kangaroo rats of North America, all three groups have evolved a similar set of adaptations to life in the deep desert.

Jerboas are nocturnal. During the heat of the day, they shelter in burrows. They create four separate types of burrow: two temporary, and two permanent. The temporary burrows are plain tubes: those used to escape from predators during the night are just 10 to 20 cm deep, unsealed and not camouflaged; the permanent daytime burrows are well-hidden and sealed with a plug of sand to keep heat out and moisture in, and are 20 to 50 cm long.

Permanent burrows are also sealed and camouflaged, and often have multiple entrances. They are much more elaborate structures with a nesting chamber. The winter burrows have food storage chambers 40 to 70 cm below ground level, and a hibernation chamber an astonishing 1.5 to 2.5 metres down.

Perhaps the best-known species is the Lesser Egyptian Jerboa (Jaculus jaculus) which occupies some of the most hostile deserts on the planet. It does not drink at all, relying on its food to provide enough moisture for survival. Found in both the sandy and stony deserts of north Africa, Arabia and Iran, this small creature estivates (a form of hibernation) during the hottest summer months, and has the ability to leap a full metre to escape a predator.

Two species are considered threatened: the Five-toed Pygmy Jerboa and the Thick-tailed Pygmy Jerboa, which are both classified as vulnerable (VU). Many other species have been placed in a "lower risk" category, and one species (Thomas's Pygmy Jerboa) lacks the data for assessment.


[edit] Classification