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Ancestor: Scraping Mice

Size: Smallest: 25cm (38cm including tail), 46cm (57cm including tail)

Dietary Needs: Ratmice have a varied and adaptable diet. They eat any kind of meat, including carrion. Some meat is acquired via hunting of smaller animals, including invertebrates like worms and insects, or the eggs of birds. They will eat isopods from rotting wood and soil. They seek out certain fruits at certain seasons and can eat seeds from seed-bearing (but non-fruiting) plants. When certain select richly nutritious grain species are ripe they will eat those. They also selectively eat safe-to-eat species of fungi such as mushrooms.

Life Cycle: Like most mice, the males attract females with ultrasonic calls in the spring. At the northernmost parts of their range this is the end of the dry season, at the Southernmost it's the end of the cold season, so it's the best time for reproduction to start.

Males have variable involvement with their pups. It first depends on individual male personality, some males don't show any interest while others will forage for and play with their pups. It secondly depends on how thinly stretched a male is between litters of pups. Some particularly successful males might even forget a few of them due to having so many.

Females make secluded nests by crudely weaving the grass into tunnels and lining it with fur, moss and dry grass. They choose large bunches of tall mature grass that are less likely to be stepped on or grazed down by grass-eaters. Some species can also burrow in the dirt and make hybrid nests.

Females can comfortably raise two litters a year due to their fast growth, though pups from a previous litter might stick around overlapping the new, but are expected to forage and help with the new ones and not beg for food from their mother.

They will not get pregnant before the cold or dry season.

Other: They are very generalized animals not only in diet. In terms of movement they are capable climbers and swimmers, but not at at cost to their terrestrial movement which is fast and agile. They have excellent jumping ability.