146: Harvest Mice
First, a fascinating and heartbreaking update about animal #42, Bison (which incidentally is my most liked post!): a new paper in The Review of Economic Studies looks at the terrible effects that the near-extinction of the bison as a deliberate policy of European settlers had on Native Americans. I would be interested to see more studies of similar instances where a group of people and a particular animal have a very close relationship.
Today we’re going to talk about some cute little guys, harvest mice! There are two species in Colorado, the Western Harvest Mouse and the Plains Harvest Mouse, the former being a little bit larger than the latter. The former live in a variety of habitats, like woodlands and shrubby areas, while the latter live only in open grasslands. These cute little guys eat invertebrates and breed very fast – they can and do produce young every month of the year.