Speckled Dasyure
Encyclopedia
The Speckled Dasyure also known as the Long-clawed Marsupial Mouse, is a member of the Dasyuromorphia
order
. It is an inhabitant of Papua, Indonesia
and Papua New Guinea
. It is the only member of the genus
Neophascogale.
Its weight varies between 200 and 250 g; its body length ranges 16–23 cm, and the tail 16-23 cm. As its name suggested, its dark gray fur
is speckled with long white hairs. It has short, powerful limbs with long claws on all toes, used to dig for grubs, worm
s, and similar prey.
Dasyuromorphia
The order Dasyuromorphia comprises most of the Australian carnivorous marsupials, including quolls, dunnarts, the numbat, the Tasmanian devil, and the recently extinct thylacine...
order
Order (biology)
In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...
. It is an inhabitant of Papua, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
. It is the only member of the genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
Neophascogale.
Its weight varies between 200 and 250 g; its body length ranges 16–23 cm, and the tail 16-23 cm. As its name suggested, its dark gray fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
is speckled with long white hairs. It has short, powerful limbs with long claws on all toes, used to dig for grubs, worm
Worm
The term worm refers to an obsolete taxon used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, and stems from the Old English word wyrm. Currently it is used to describe many different distantly-related animals that typically have a long cylindrical...
s, and similar prey.
