Colours of Wildlife - Sloggett's Rat
Created | Updated Sep 1, 2013
Sloggett's Rat
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
Rodents, and bats, constitute the two largest orders of mammals, with more species between them than all the rest of the mammal orders put together. And also, both rodents and bats have a PR problem: they're viewed quite negatively by lots of people. Bats are considered creepy, while rodents are often considered pests. The word 'rat' for instance doesn't have many positive connotations. We associate it with house rats, sewer rats, lab rats. In truth rats are very sophisticated creatures and deserve a lot more credit than we give them. The rats that plague our houses, farms and cities – and that we sometimes keep as pets as well – are only two species, the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, and the Brown Rat, Rattus norvegicus. These two are very adaptable and resilient. There are many, many other species of rats that are quite different … that are restricted to very specific habitats. Many of these are very rarely encountered by people and we know little about them. Sloggett's Rat is one of these. It is named after Colonel A. T. Sloggett, who collected rodents in South Africa in the early twentieth century.
An Ice Rat and A Nice Rat
This species, Otomys sloggetti, occurs high up in the mountains of South Africa and the small country of Lesotho which is completely enclosed within ours. These are the Drakensberg Mountains which in Lesotho expands into a complex range called the Malutis. At their highest they reach over 3 000 m/10 000 ft. Sloggett's rat occurs at altitudes over 2 500m/8 300 ft, with one specific colony having its 'base' among rocks at the summit of Mont-aux-Sources, the highest mountain in South Africa, making it the 'highest' of all our mammal species! It is also called the Ice Rat. These mountains are the only parts of South Africa that get frequent snow and freezing winters. On cold but sunny winter days these rats will emerge and bask in the sun amidst the snow and ice so as to warm themselves up. They also have very dense, fluffy fur and compact bodies with short ears and tails, which helps them to conserve their body heat.
They are quite cute looking and more reminiscent of guinea pigs, hamsters or marmots than of rats. Marmots are actually ground squirrels, while guinea pigs belong to an assemblage of South American rodents perhaps related to porcupines. Hamsters, though, are close relatives of mice and rats. Actually the word 'rat' doesn't have a clear biological meaning. Typical rats and mice belong to the family Muridae. A related family of rats and mice occurring in Africa is the Nesomyidae. As it is, the two families both include species called mice and other ones called rats. The only criterion is size, the larger species called rats and the smaller ones called mice. And this is also not always consistent … there are some 'mice' that are larger and heavier than some 'rats'. The names by which we call these rodents do not even remotely reflect the huge diversity of species that exist. Africa has a very rich variety of these small rodents … or sometimes not-so-small, such as the giant pouched rats which I hope to feature here soon.
Sloggett's Rat belongs to a distinctive tribe of rat-like rodents called the Grooved-toothed Rats, the Otomyini, belonging to the typical rat and mouse family, the Muridae. This tribe is only found in Africa and has two groups, the first the genus Otomys (meaning 'ear mouse'), which includes Sloggett's Rat and twenty-five or more species called Groove-toothed Rats or Vlei Rats ('vlei' being the Afrikaans name for a marsh, in which habitat many species are found). The other genus is Parotomys, which are the two species of Whistling Rat found in desert and semi-desert in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. All these are rather round and stoutly built rodents with shortened tails and faces. The whistling rats, like Sloggett's rat, are very cute as well, with soft, dense fur and sort, hamster-like faces with large eyes and small ears. Sometimes Sloggett's Rat is separated into a distinct genus, Myotomys, along with the Bush Karoo Rat.
Rocky Rodents
Life is harsh high in the mountains. Snow and cold, strong winds, heavy rain and hail are regular occurrences. Not many mammal predators live this high, but there are predatory birds like eagles, lammergeyers, falcons and white-necked ravens. To escape from these, Sloggett's rats use hideouts in rock crevices. They are most frequent around piles of boulders or rocky outcrops. They dig burrows below the rocks, and up to six rats will share one burrow. There will be other burrows close by, and patches of suitable habitat will therefore sustain small colonies of rats.
Breeding will begin in summer, when it is sunny and warm. These rats are not very fecund. They only give birth to one or two pups per litter. These firmly attach themselves to their mother's teats and she will drag them around with her as she goes about her daily business. At the age of five weeks they will start going out but will stay with their parents until they are sexually mature.
The vegetation in these mountains is short and scrubby. Most plants grow around the rocky outcrops and scree piles where these rats live as well, sheltered against cold and wind between the boulders and in crevices. Alpine everlastings, genus Helichrysum, are hardy plants in the daisy family, that grow here. The rats will eat the leaves, stems, flowers and seeds of these plants. They have strong incisor teeth to nip off pieces of these tough plants; they will carry bits of plants to their burrows to use as food stores so they have something to eat during heavy storms or on winter days when it is too cold to go outside.
These rats are not rare in suitable habitat, but because this habitat is mostly inaccessible, they have not been much studied by humans so there's much we could still learn of them.
