Southern african mastomys
The southern multimammate mouse or southern African mastomys (Mastomys coucha ) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae which is endemic to southern Africa (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). It is called a multimammate mouse because it can have 8 to 12 pairs of mammae (milk producing glands), in comparison other mouse species only have 5 pairs.
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starts withM. coucha is sympatric with M. natalensis and the two species cannot be distinguished by superficial appearance alone. M. coucha and M. natalensis can be definitively identified by karyotyping (they have different numbers of chromosomes) or DNA sequencing. However, on closer analysis they do have anatomical (cranial, dental and phallic morphology) and physiological (hemoglobin pattern and pheromones) differences.
Many academic labs and publicly available animals were derived from a colony originally misidentified as M. natalensis.
The southern multimammate rat is currently being bred in the US and Canada as a pet, and as a replacement food source for reptiles, replacing the brown rat as a viable food source for picky eaters. It is also recognized as one of the natural food sources for ball pythons. They are also being used for stomach cancer research, among other ailments. Europeans have begun breeding them for companion animal use, namely in Germany and England. This trend is also catching, slowly, in the US and Canada.
Only recently has it been introduced to the pet trade, and is more often kept as a feeder rodent for snakes than as a pet.