Typical striped grass mouse
The typical striped grass mouse is a small rodent of the suborder Myomorpha in the family Muridae.
Taxonomy
Lemniscomys striatus comprises a complex of various similar species. Furthermore, there are about eleven different species of striped grass mouse, of which Lemniscomys barbarus and Lemniscomys striatus are the two most frequently encountered in captivity.The species is divided into the following six subspecies:
- L. s. striatus: Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo;
- L. s. ardens : central Kenya and southern Tanzania;
- L. s. dieterleni : eastern DRCongo;
- L. s. luluae : Angola, southern DRCongo;
- L. s. massaicus : South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Ruanda, Burundi, Zambia and southeastern DRCongo;
- L. s. wroughtoni : central and western Ethiopia.
Description
Image:GolundaPulchellaWolf.jpg|thumb|left|Lemniscomys striatus pulchella from Joseph Wolf – Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1864Lemniscomys striatus is a small rodent, with the length of the head and the body between, the length of the tail between, the length of the foot between, the length of the ears between and a weight up to. The average adult weight is.
Its back is blackish-brown, with pale dorsal stripes extended up to the base of the tail and rows of small pale spots on each side of the body. The ventral parts are whitish, with yellowish reflections on the abdomen and chest. Its feet are brownish. Its tail is longer than the head and the body and it is darker above and clearer below. Females have two pairs of pectoral breasts and two inguinal pairs. The karyotype is 2n = 43–44, FN = 58-68-72-74.
Cycle of life
The female reaches sexual maturity at around 168 days, the gestation period is about twenty-five days, and the average number of mice in a litter is 4.54.The lifespan of the typical striped grass mouse is short. In the wild, they generally do not live much past their first breeding season, but in captivity they may live longer. The maximum age documented for a typical striped grass mouse in captivity is 4.8 years.