The grasshopper mouse found in the deserts of North America, howls to proclaim its territory. Do you know what it feeds on? Its main diet consists of scorpions, centipedes and other scary insects. Before feasting on its prey, it lets out a high-pitched cry into the night sky.
The three species of grasshopper mice – all members of the genus Onychomys – are among the most carnivorous of all rodents. These are not adorable grain-eaters. Grasshopper mice are agile little predators which regularly take on prey as large, if not larger, than themselves. Insects, scorpions, lizards, and other mice make up about ninety percent of a grasshopper mouse’s diet. And, like other carnivores, they roam relatively large territories but have low population densities – a swath of habitat can only support so many hunters.
Since the diets of grasshopper mice are so different than those of their herbivorous relatives, we would expect their jaws to reflect this different lifestyle. But exactly how grasshopper mice diverge from their plant-eating cousins has been a matter of debate. In a 2006 paper on the jaw anatomy of the northern grasshopper mouse Onychomys leucogaster, anatomists Kazuhiko Satoh and Fumihiko Iwaku proposed that the carnivorous rodent had a relatively weak bite force but a wider gape compared to plant-eating mice. This seemed to be consistent with the predator’s attack strategy. Chewing grains all day requires a good deal of crushing power, but cutting into flesh and insect carapaces might not require as much force. Evolution had caused the grasshopper mouse to sacrifice bite strength for a wider gape to enfold its unfortunate prey.
Credit : Wired
Picture Credit : Google
