Onychomys torridus
The southern grasshopper mouse or scorpion mouse is a species of predatory rodent in the family Cricetidae, native to Mexico and the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah in the United States. Notable for its resistance to venom, it routinely preys on the highly venomous Arizona bark scorpion.

National Park Service · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- southern grasshopper mousePBDB
- Sits inside
- OnychomysPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Onychomys
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Mass
- 2.34 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 198 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.4 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Onychomys torridus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
5 occurrences- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene20%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Onychomys torridus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Onychomys torridus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Onychomys torridus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
113 taxa- Megascapheus bottae5 sites
- Canis latrans3 sites
- Dipodomys merriami3 sites
- Dipodomys ordii3 sites
- Dipodomys spectabilis3 sites
- Neotoma albigula3 sites
- Perognathus flavus3 sites
- Sylvilagus audubonii3 sites
- Antrozous pallidus2 sites
- Camelops2 sites
- Chaetodipus hispidus2 sites
- Cratogeomys castanops2 sites
- Crotalus2 sites
- Dipodomys2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Erethizon dorsatum2 sites
- Homo sapiens2 sites
- Lepus2 sites
- Lepus californicus2 sites
- Mammuthus2 sites
- Marmota flaviventris2 sites
- Myotis velifer2 sites
- Neotoma2 sites
- Neotoma micropus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Onychomys torridus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- Late Pleistocene and early Recent mammals from Fowlkes Cave, southern Culberson County, Texas2
- A review of the biostratigraphy of Pliocene and Pleistocene sediments in the Elsinore Fault Zone, Riverside County, California1
- Blancan, Irvingtonian, and Rancholabrean(?) land mammal age faunas from western Riverside County, California1
- Pleistocene-Recent fauna of the Isleta Caves, Bernalillo County, New Mexico1
Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Onychomys torridus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- National Park Service
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Onychomys torridus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itOnychomys through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Coues 1874)