Werewolves are more real than you thought. There’s a tiny, completely innocent-looking rodent called the grasshopper mouse who is a skilled, cold-blooded (metaphorically, of course) hunter that also howls at the moon. Just like werewolves from the silver screen!
These mice eat plenty of animals, including scorpions! I don’t know about you, but I think this tiny animal is incredibly cool, and really scary as well. It sounds like something that horror b-movie producers would come up with when they run out of ideas. The Return of the Scorpion-Eating Mouse! The Moon-Howling Rodent That has an Unquenchable Thirst for Meat! The Wererodent! The Nightmare Mammal That Eats its Fellow Rodents! The movie posters just write themselves, don’t they?
More info: nationalgeographic.com
The grasshopper mouse acts just like a werewolf
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Grasshopper mice live in the United States and Mexico, so don’t worry, fellow Europeans — the Atlantic Ocean is here to protect us (and our scorpions) from these fiendish, carnivorous mammals!
These rodents are tiny! The southern grasshopper mouse is only 3.5 to 5 inches long (that’s 89 to 12.7 centimeters). But don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s like any other mouse out there in the world. They are deadly, just not to us people.
This rodent isn’t picky about what it eats
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Grasshopper mice are notoriously capable killers. They count lizards, insects, scorpions and even other rodents among their prey. They hunt and consume these animals’ flesh. In other words, they attac but they don’t protec.
The mouse is as cool as it is frightening
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
What’s more, these mice feast upon incredibly venomous centipedes that usually kill rodents by injecting them with a deadly toxin. Grasshopper mice are just as clever as they are ferocious. They know that these centipedes only inject their toxin when they catch their prey. So they attack the centipedes from a distance until they can’t move anymore.
What’s more, the rodent howls at the moon
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
Image credits: National Geographic
And don’t even think of getting a grasshopper mouse and holding it with other rodents. They’ll become the mouse’s lunch. And we don’t want that to happen.
Image credits: Nat Geo WILD
Grasshopper mice are pretty solitary animals. They live either alone or in pairs. They also fight over territory, with one mouse or a mouse couple occupying an average territory of 28 acres. So, tell us what you think of this incredibly deadly rodent! Which part do you find cooler: that this mouse eats scorpions or that it howls at the moon?
This is what people thought of the ultra-hardcore grasshopper mouse
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