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Ancestor: Montane Climbing Mouse

Size:  12 -15 cm without the tail, 18 - 22 cm with tail

Dietary Needs: Seeds, moss, fungi, grains, worms. They make stores of these foods to survive the winter.

Life Cycle: The relative scarcity of food in their native habitat compared to other habitats means that they are feircly competitive over foraging territory. Adults generally don't live together, with the rare exception of littermates or mating pairs, but this is only as resources allow. Difficulty eventually separates them.

Males are territorial and have an ultrasonic call that usually comes into use in spring and continues over summer. This call is considerably louder and produces more frequencies than the ancestral call, so it can carry across mountains. Being able to advertise occupancy from far away has the psychological effect on other males that they will avoid that direction. It will also attract females from further away, attracting more mating options.

As an effect of this females  are often in the position of fighting over local territory under the male's protection, which can get quite bloody and rough when standing tall and sizing up doesn't cause one of them to fold.  Multiple females are likely to be mated, but only the fiercest will win the territory. Very occasionally two females will stay on opposite ends of the male territory where they never meet. Although the female will have to share foraging space, provided the male has secured large enough territory it is worth the male's protection. The male will drive out other males, who are a danger to pups, and when the pups get older and the female drives them out, he will still treat them as competition but give them greater leniency than those he has no direct relation to.

Fights between males over mates and territory can get bloody, though they will usually try to settle the fight with sizing up, shoving and lots of noise first. There is very little difference in fighting style between females and males, nor is there very much sexual dimorphism.

Other: During the winter they will burrow in snow and semi-hibernate, leaving occasionally to go to the bathroom or eat from their food store. Theirs is a latitude that doesn't get much winter weather in the lowlands and when it does it's more of an anomaly. But at the high elevation they live at ice and snow are common in winter months.

In the summer, winter snow doesn't melt easily. It can even stay all year round, building up year after year to form glaciers. How much white they have on their fur is usually indicative of where their population of origin is located and how much snow there is around the year. More white means more snow.

They have many extended hairs on their fluffy coat. Not only do they help prevent snow from building on their backs by breaking it up, but it also gives their coat more form, keeping the interior hairs more separated when it's in it's round, fluffy form. The extra space acts as a heat pocket. Lastly the hairs are very vibration sensitive which comes in to use usually when they are tunnelling in snow. Not only might predators be seeking them out, but they can sense creeping instabilities in the snow they're burrowed in and get out of there before it slides and becomes an avalanche. They should not be mistaken for spikes or spines, as they lack the rigidity and thickness required to cause any harm to their predators.

Species:

There are several species of hairball mouse living in various high elevation locations across their range, separated by valleys that cut through the mountains. These valleys may be carved out by water but sometimes it's a glacier that acts as a barrier between populations.