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Ancestor: Pith Mouse
Temporal Range:
Temporal Range:
Evolved: By 2 Myh.
Extinct: Not yet.
Geographical Range:
Geographical Range:
Location: Catland's Southern forests and connected woodlands.
Viable Habitat: Forest and woodland with connected canopy. May also be found in mountain forests.
Size: Longest species: 40m not including tail (70cm including tail). Shortest length species : 18cm not including tail (45 cm including tail)
Dietary Needs: Adult folivorus mice have a herbivorous diet of tree leaves, seeds, mushrooms and fruit. Consumption of animal protein is very rare, except in the smaller species which will opportunistically eat nearby invertebrates.
Out of the leaves available to them they mainly young leaves before they toughen, unless the older toughened leaves are the only option. They may eat foliage of descendants of Elderberry, Hemp and sometimes Catnip descendants on the rare occasions they venture far down from the canopy and cross ground on foot, but they don't eat grass, spruce or palm foliage. Most plants they eat are deciduous, so they rely on making a stash of seeds to survive the winter defoliation. Berries and mushrooms are rarely included in these stashes unless they have dried out naturally, as non-dried berries are a good place for fungal spores to sprout and a fungal infestation can ruin a stash.
Young that have started to wean from their milk have a mixed diet of invertebrates and fruit. As they continue to wean off milk they move on to leaves as they grow and taper off consumption of invertebrates to almost none at all.
Life Cycle: When it's time to give birth they build nests up in the high trees, similar to birds. They usually use a secure location, where there is plenty of support to keep the nest secure. The nest is made of a mix of twigs, leaves and moss.
The pups move around after around two weeks, by which time their eyes are open and they have some fur. If any will be cannibalized by their mother due to defects or stress, it's at this stage and usually no later.
They latch onto their mother's fur with their grasping feet and for another few weeks don't leave physical contact with her. They usually latch onto her sides as they can't access milk from her back and her underside brushes against tree bark too often. The mammary glands and nipples are also located further to the the sides now. Weak offspring usually get pushed to their mother's back by stronger offspring and go listless from hunger (which will eventually cause them to let go and fall), resulting in increased selection for vigour and competitiveness between siblings. Mothers lose interest in (or sometimes don't even notice) offspring that are becoming weak, focusing only on the ones that are clearly healthy. The number of pups in a litter can start at as much as 8, and by adulthood the strongest 2 or 3 are left.
They spend their second month gaining confidence venturing greater distances and longer amounts of time away from their mother. At this point mortality rate drastically drops and most offspring that will survive to adulthood are left by this point. As their bodies grow it gets easier for them to grasp and reach between twigs and branches.
They can be sexually mature within three months for smaller species and five months for larger species. However in some locations seasonal change makes it practically prohibitive to start reproducing when physically ready. To add to this their sex drive doesn't kick in until the winter season has passed. In the Northernmost part of their range where the climate is much milder, even still somewhat warm in winter, some mice can reproduce over the winter and have their first pups after they're physically ready.
Males and females separately own territories, and dominant males will have a group of surrounding female territories that he will visit with regularity to mate, mark his ownership and defend his offspring and from other males that he has detected the urine trail of, and keep the attraction of the female. Due to living in the trees and not having continuous ground immediately under their feet the males no longer scent mark in a continuous trail, but go in a string of discrete marking spots.
Navigation is slow and risky, so the surrounding female territories are usually quite near and deeply overlap the dominant male's.
Other: Most species are able to curl their tail around a branch, pinching it around itself to make it secure, and are able to use it as a lifeline in case they fall.
As for the few larger species that can't do this, it's because they evolved a larger size so quickly that there wasn't enough time for the needed musculoskeletal adaptations in the tail and spine to deal with the increased weight. Such species usually have longer legs and improved grasping strength, making death by falls very rare. The selective pressures for a weight-supporting tail were decreased due to this improved grip.
Smaller species have shorter toes and longer claws, relying on a mixture of traction and grasping to move in a variety of arboreal environments from thick tree trunks to trees and shrubs with small, densely packed branches that only permit travel for very small organisms.
The larger species are more reliant on grasping and move considerably more carefully through the branches.
They have larger, flatter molars for smoother grinding of plant matter, and flatter, broader incisors to clip bunches of leaves to consume instead of one at a time. They can also grasp leaves and other food items with their forepaws and bring them towards their mouth.
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