It was last seen 42 years ago and was believed to be extinct. But the Bavarian short-eared mouse — a unique species of rodent that lives in a remote part of the Alps – has made a surprise comeback.
A German zoologist last spotted the extremely rare mouse in 1962, after discovering the species in Bavaria. Zoologists have been fruitlessly searching for the mouse, known as Microtus bavaricus, ever since.
On Monday, however, it emerged that the species was not extinct after all but was still alive and well and living in the Austrian mountains. An Austrian scientist, Friederike Spitzenberger, stumbled upon the species in one of her ”living traps”.
On Monday, Spitzenberger, who works at Vienna’s Natural History Museum, said the mammal looked very similar to other rival kinds of mouse. But it was, in fact, a unique species that had evolved 10 000 years ago at the time of the last ice age, after becoming stranded in the Rofan mountains, just across the border from the German Alps.
”Technically it’s not a mouse at all but a vole,” Dr Spitzenberger explained.
”All the voles look like sausages with four legs. They all have tiny ears and short tails. You have to look at their teeth to tell them apart. But the only real way to tell is to examine the genetics.”
She added: ”The mouse is extremely rare. Probably only a few hundred of them exist. We now have to make sure that they don’t die out.”
Spitzenberger said she found the mouse in August in an isolated spruce forest full of brooks. But it was only after examining its chromosomes and comparing its DNA with that of a stuffed museum specimen that she was able to identify it as the lost species.
There were only a handful of indigenous species living in central Europe, most of them ”remnant” populations that got separated from the evolutionary mainstream.
”We have a very diverse number of mammals and birds,” the scientist said. ”But because of the intense management of forests, several of them are in danger.”
What were the mouse’s prospects now? ”I’m optimistic,” she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â