Home › Volumes › American Animals › Rats, Mice and Lemmings
Cotton Rat
- Length
- 12 inches.
- Description
- Peculiar among the long-tailed rats and mice from its superficial resemblance to the meadow mice from which, however, its long tail will at once distinguish it. It has the same short legs, and short appressed ears with the aperture nearly covered by the hair, and the fur is longer and coarser than any other member of this group. The molar teeth are round in outline and divided into triangles on top as in the meadow mice. Colour yellowish brown above thickly sprinkled with black hairs, under parts whitish. Tail only scantily haired, the scales visible.
- Range
- Eastern North Carolina around the Gulf Coast to Louisiana. Represented in Florida by closely allied varieties.
- Range
- East coast of Florida, Miami northward.
- Range
- Extreme southern tropical Florida north to Miami and Tampa.
The cotton rats are Southern animals, the common cotton rat being an inhabitant of the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast from North Carolina to Louisiana.
Its favourite haunts are the hedges and ditches and deserted old fields, banks of abandoned rice plantations and similar situations. Here it burrows and constructs its underground nest. Like the field mouse of the North, the cotton rat is subject to great variation in colour and the slightest difference in environment produces an appreciable difference in the appearance of the animals.
Varieties of the Cotton Rat
1. Cotton Rat. Sigmodon hispidus Say and Ord. Range and description as above.
2. Chapman's Cotton Rat. S. hispidus littoralis Chapman. Very much darker, nearly black above finely mixed with gray, with no brown tints.
3. Bangs' Cotton Rat. S. hispidus spadicipygus Bangs. Smaller than either of the above, and browner than the latter.