Can different types of rodents live together?
•›•ºPî†ßüLL Gî®L°•‹•
When I was younger I had a rat with a mouse and my rat killed the mouse.
Can anyone possibly tell me why?
jozee
> Can mice live with hamsters? Can rats live with hamsters. If not, why?
They are different species so, I wouldn't trust a hamster with a mouse.
Hamsters are very much loners in the wild. The only come together to breed.
Rats are very territorial and would most likely kill a hamster.
> When I was younger I had a rat with a mouse and my rat killed the mouse.
> Can anyone possibly tell me why?
A rat and a mouse would not co-exist with one another in the wild. Thus, in
captivity they wouldn't get along.
The only rodents and that I have seen lively together peacefully are rabbits
and guinea pigs.
Dwarf hamsters of the same species can live together peacefully. Syrian
Golden Hamsters are best kept on their own.
jozee ;o)
Kerri Kadow
did have 2 male mice at one time living with 4 Syrian hamsters, and all got
along, but I would NEVER EVER do that again for the reason I stated above. I'm
not sure why it worked out with the ones I had before, but it was mostly
likely cause those hamsters I had were very odd, most I bred from those 4 got
along with other Syrians with almost no fighting and no injuries, it was a
"once in a blue moon" type thing I guess. I was a kid when I did that, and I
know now just how much of a HORRIBLE, stupid idea it was
--
"My evil twin... bad weather friend... He always wants to start when I want to
begin..." --They Might Be Giants ("My Evil Twin", from Apollo 18)
"Don't you hate it when people put quotes at the end of their email?"
-- MY evil twin
I.C. Koets
副兵P裵ﾟ�L G鈹Lｰ赴�wrote:
>
> Can mice live with hamsters? Can rats live with hamsters. If not, why?
> When I was younger I had a rat with a mouse and my rat killed the mouse.
> Can anyone possibly tell me why?
- Rats see anything smaller than them as snacks.
- Hamsters get very territorial about their food. Anything small eating
their food will be attacked.
- Mice gang up on anything they perceive as a threat.
So no, not a good idea.
I.C. Koets
MsMosugoji
>and guinea pigs.
>
You are a moron. Neither rabbits nor pigs are "rodents". Guinea pigs are
cavies, related to the capybara of South America and rabbits are lagomorphs.
Look it up. As for living together, it's NOT a good idea, because while they
may get along, rabbits kick, and a guinea pig which has been kicked in the
vitals is as good as dead. Comprende?
Conster
Andy
MsMosugoji <msmos...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20001224052542...@ng-ch1.aol.com...
> You are a moron. Neither rabbits nor pigs are "rodents". Guinea pigs are
> cavies, related to the capybara of South America
Your the ''moron''!! Rabbits and Guinea Pigs ARE rodents! and the Capybara
you mention is one also, the largest rodent in the world in fact.
Andy
ivy
rabbit are not exactly rodents..
rodents possess four incisors located at the front of the jaw. two above and
two below with the latter just behind the former..
while rabbits and hares have eight incisor teeth in a four-paired position
with one tooth behind the other..thus they are not rodents BUT are in a
related order known as Lagomorpha..
MsMosugoji
AtOm
together, not biology.
MsMosugoji <msmos...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20001224141944...@ng-fi1.aol.com...
Andy
>
In that case,....why does it say in my copy of the Guiness Book Of Records
that the largest RODENT is the South American Capybara (a close relative of
the Guinea pig) ????
Andy
ivy
Consider it the case of the guinea pigs that roared. One cried, "I am
Rodent!" and the other, "You're nuts -- Rodentia is dead!"
In a bluntly worded new report, researchers from Italy and Sweden have
declared that the guinea pig, famed as a child's pet and medicine's
sacrificial lamb, is not now and never has been a rodent. That conclusion
may sound like a rather narrow scientific matter, but in fact the
implications of the guinea pig's unmoored status are profound, calling into
question the entire concept of rodenthood.
People may think they recognize a rodent when they see it scurry by in the
park, gnaw through apartment plumbing or jump merrily over a glue trap. Yet
the new analysis suggests that guinea pigs, rats, mice, squirrels,
porcupines and hundreds of other species, long classified together under the
order Rodentia, may not warrant assemblage into a single distinctive order.
Instead, the new work indicates, the creatures may be better thought of as a
ragtag band of only vaguely related animals displaying generic and ancient
mammalian features.
The report, a detailed molecular analysis of genetic relatedness among
various species of rodents and other mammals, appears on Thursday in the
journal Nature.
Among the hallmarks of a biological order is that members of the group are
all thought to descend from a single common ancestor -- that is, they are
said to be monophyletic. But the latest report presents data indicating that
rodents stem from at least two distinct ancestors, and possibly more.
"The main achievement of this paper is to say that rodents are
polyphyletic," said Dr. Cecilia Saccone of the University of Bari in Italy.
"There are at least two, and maybe other, branches in the group." Dr.
Saccone wrote the report with Dr. Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in
Sweden and their colleagues.
Not surprisingly for a report with such radical ramifications, other
scientists attacked it as uncredible, naive and full of holes.
"It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of," said Dr. Rodney
Honeycutt, who studies the molecular evolution of rodents and other mammals
at Texas A&M University. "There's a huge amount of data showing that rodents
are unequivocally monophyletic."
Beyond upsetting traditional notions of what a rodent is, the report
threatens biology's understanding of mammalian evolution as a whole. Dr.
Michael Novacek, an expert in evolution and taxonomy at the American Museum
of Natural History in New York, explained that rodents had long been viewed
as a sort of exemplary group of mammals.
They are extremely successful and diverse, with more species to their
credit than any other mammalian group. By current reckoning, half of all
4,000 known mammals are rodents.
"Looking at a model system like rodents can tell us a lot about how
evolution works," Novacek said. "Understanding whether rodents come from one
or two or more points of origin has a lot of bearing on how we view the
world's most successful mammalian group."
Regarding the group's importance in understanding the evolution of mammals,
he said, "it's like asking whether life on earth originated once or multiple
times."
Novacek said that while he was not yet ready to "dissolve the entire order
Rodentia," he was impressed by the strength of the new molecular data.
The current report is not the first to question the sanctity of the rodent
order, or the classification of the guinea pig. In 1991, Dr. Dan Graur of
Tel Aviv University and his colleagues fired the first shot by writing a
paper for Nature titled, "Is the Guinea Pig a Rodent?" and proceeded to cast
doubt on the matter. The latest study does not twitch in its bold
declaration, again in the headline, "The Guinea Pig Is Not a Rodent."
Previous molecular studies of rodents were based on more limited
comparisons of a handful of genes or proteins. Dr. Saccone and her
colleagues took the burdensome route of spelling out, or sequencing, all
16,000 subunits in the rings of genetic material found in the structures
that power the cell.
After completing the sequencing, they compared the genetic pattern in
guinea pigs to that found in rats and mice, as well as in 13 other mammalian
species, including chimpanzees, humans, gray seals, cows, opossums and
others.
Through complex statistical and computational manipulations, the scientists
constructed phylogenetic "trees," linking animals that were genetically most
closely related. Those calculations allowed them to conclude that while rats
and mice are close cousins, as any city dweller can attest, guinea pigs are
off on a distant branch and deserve their own order. And with the guinea
pig, in theory, would go 17 other types of South American rodents thought to
be its close relatives.
Other recent studies have also cast doubt on the presumed kinship between
rabbits and rodents, while still others have questioned the relationships
between porcupines and other rodents of the Americas. All told, a bit of
disorder has shaken the great rodent burrow.
Opponents of the notion of multiple lineages for rodents criticize the
strictly molecular approach on many fronts. Dr. Patrick Luckett of the
University of Puerto Rico, an expert in rodent anatomy and embryology, said
it was ludicrous to reach so many sweeping conclusions about rodent taxonomy
based on a sampling of three rodent species, guinea pigs, rats and mice.
"There are 2,021 living species and probably that many extinct ones,"
Luckett said. "There are 29 families in the rodent order. The authors of the
Nature paper have looked at three species taken from only two rodent
families. They say they have a 'comprehensive' data set. Well, 3 out of
2,000 is not comprehensive to me. It's scanty."
Luckett, Honeycutt and others pointed out that the integrity of the rodent
order was buttressed by vast amounts of data from morphology -- the study of
body structure and form -- and paleontology. They said rodents were
distinguished by their entire head region. They have specialized incisors
with enamel only on the front of the teeth, allowing them to be
self-sharpening and ever-growing. The jaw musculature permits them to gnaw
with their incisors at the same time that they are chewing with their
molars. The fetal membranes found in rodents are unique among mammals, as is
the pattern of embryonic development.
"I could show a guinea pig to my 10-year-old daughter," Honeycutt said,
"and she could tell me it's a rodent."
But Graur insists that molecular results are stronger and more objective
than anything to be gleaned by studying anatomy or paleontology.
"I am one of those people who believe that DNA is the ultimate way to
answer questions," he said. "I don't believe morphological data; they're
defined so vaguely. People talk about something being 'slightly slanted' or
'moderately curved.' I come from a mathematical background, and I don't like
definitions like that."
But when it comes to a subunit of DNA, Graur said, there is no arguing
which is which.
Graur admits that the debate now is polarized beyond immediate resolution.
"People call it the Big Divorce," he said. "There really is no point in
talking to each other. We just quarrel."
Yet he cannot help but knock the morphologically minded as being, in his
view, scientific fossils. "We people who do taxonomy have a 300-year history
of being nasty to each other," he said. "I like to keep up with tradition."
AtOm
Guinea Pig
----------
Stout-bodied nearly tailless domesticated *cavy*; often kept as a pet and
widely used in research
Part of: cavy - Short-tailed rough-haired South American rodent
Part of: genus Cavia - Type genus of the Caviidae: guinea pigs
Part of: family Caviidae - A family of Hystricomorpha
Part of: suborder Hystricomorpha - An order of rodents including:
porcupines; guinea pigs; chinchillas; etc.
Part of: order Rodentia - Small gnawing animals: porcupines; rats;
mice; squirrels; marmots; beavers; gophers; voles; hamsters; guinea pigs;
agoutis
Part of: subclass Eutheria - All mammals except monotremes and
marsupials
Part of: class Mammalia - Warm-blooded vertebrates characterized by
mammary glands in the female
Then there's a subphylum and a phylum but I can't be bothered to go there.
Capybara
----------
Pig-sized tailless South American amphibious *rodent* with partly webbed
feet; largest living rodent
Type of: 'rodent' - Relatively small gnawing animals having a single pair of
constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawing
Part of: order Rodentia - Small gnawing animals: porcupines; rats; mice;
squirrels; marmots; beavers; gophers; voles; hamsters; guinea pigs; agoutis
As above....
Rabbit
-------
Any of various burrowing animals of the family *Leporidae* having long ears
and short tails; some domesticated and raised for pets or food
Type of: leporid - Rabbits and hares
Part of: family Leporidae - Hares and rabbits
Part of: order Lagomorpha - Rabbits; hares; pikas; *formerly* considered
the suborder Duplicidentata of the order Rodentia
Part of: subclass Eutheria - All mammals except monotremes and marsupials
As above....
Just because they mention it, Duplicidentata is: In *former* classifications
considered a suborder of Rodentia coextensive with the order Lagomorpha:
gnawing animals... So there we go. Rabbits were considered rodents, but
aren't any more.
MsMosugoji
teeth at you. It insults him to be called a "rodent" :)
Conster
Andy
AtOm <at...@webmail.co.za> wrote in message
news:926s08$ami$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
> Just because they mention it, Duplicidentata is: In *former*
classifications
> considered a suborder of Rodentia coextensive with the order Lagomorpha:
> gnawing animals... So there we go. Rabbits were considered rodents, but
> aren't any more.
>
They still make good snake food whatever they are!!
Andy
