Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Muridae > Bandicota > Bandicota bengalensis

Bandicota bengalensis (lesser bandicoot rat)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The lesser bandicoot rat, Sind rice rat or Indian mole-rat (Bandicota bengalensis) is a giant rat of Southern Asia, not related to the true bandicoots. They can be up to 40 cm long (including the tail), are considered a pest in the cereal crops and gardens of India and Sri Lanka, and emit piglike grunts when attacking. The name bandicoot is derived from the Telugu language word pandikokku, which translates loosely to "pig-rat". Like the better known rats in the genus Rattus, bandicoot rats are members of the family Muridae. Their fur is dark or (rarely) pale brown dorsally, occasionally blackish, and light to dark grey ventrally. The head-body length is around 250 mm, and the uniformly dark tail is shorter than the head-body length.
View Wikipedia Record: Bandicota bengalensis

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
23
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 8.27
EDGE Score: 2.23
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  150 grams
Birth Weight [2]  5 grams
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Herbivore
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  20 %
Diet - Plants [3]  80 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  71 days
Gestation [2]  19 days
Litter Size [2]  8
Litters / Year [2]  6
Nocturnal [3]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [2]  14 inches (36 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Himalaya Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan No
Indo-Burma Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam No
Western Ghats and Sri Lanka India, Sri Lanka No

Predators

Aquila hastata (Indian Spotted Eagle)[4]
Athene brama (Spotted Owlet)[5]
Bubo bengalensis (Rock Eagle-owl)[6]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Felisa A. Smith, S. Kathleen Lyons, S. K. Morgan Ernest, Kate E. Jones, Dawn M. Kaufman, Tamar Dayan, Pablo A. Marquet, James H. Brown, and John P. Haskell. 2003. Body mass of late Quaternary mammals. Ecology 84:3403
♦ 2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 4del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 5MA, Maqbool, M. & Mushtaq-ul-Hassan, M. (1990) Food habits of spotted owlet Athene brama Pak. J. Agri. Sci., 27, 127-131
♦ 6Pande, S. & N. Dahanukar (2011). The diet of Indian Eagle Owl Bubo bengalensis and its agronomic significance. Journal of Threatened Taxa 3(8): 2011–2017.
♦ 7Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 8International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0