Being a Pacific pocket mouse means that you can easily be overlooked .....
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| Pat The Pacific Pocket Mouse |
.... but not if your named Pat, and you have reached the ripe old age of nine years and 209 days, on the 9th of February 2023.
This a notable age as it made Pat the oldest living mouse in human care ... and he got Guinness Book of records recognition the same day. In captivity, Pacific pocket mice normally live four to six years and in the wild, the mice may live one to two years .... they don't die of old age in the wild, if you get my drift.
Pat (who was named after actor Patrick Stewart), was born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park on the 14th July 2013, under a San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance conservation program, set up in 2012, because the mouse had been thought to be actually extinct for 20 years, until by chance some tiny, isolated populations were rediscovered in 1994, in Dana Point in Orange county but the species was obviously critically endangered.
The mouse, which weighs as much as three UK pennies, is the smallest mouse species in North America and gets its name from cheek pouches the animals use to carry their food and nesting materials. Last year, the alliance recorded 117 pups born in a record 31 litters and many of the mice were reintroduced to the wild this spring. Additionally a new population of Pacific pocket mice was established in Orange county’s Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, and the mice there began breeding without human assistance in 2017.
Apparently the Pacific pocket mouse is critical to its ecosystem, because the mice disperse the seeds of native plants and their digging encourages plant growth, and the reason for this near extinction by 1994 was the usual human encroachment and habitat destruction.
The mouse once had a range stretching from Los Angeles south to the Tijuana River valley, but the population plunged after 1932 .... we really are a destructive species.
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