White-eared Pocket Mouse

White-eared Pocket Mouse Also known as: Tehachapi Pocket Mouse Sexual Dimorphism: Males are larger than females. Length: Average: 155.2 mm Range: 130-183 mm Weight: Range: 16-24 g

This endangered mouse is only found in two places in the USA. They are mainly in the Mojave desert region and in the San Bernardino and Tehachapi mountain regions.

One subspecies of the White-eared Pocket Mouse may be extinct, and the other is extremely rare, consisting of isolated, relict populations near the western Mojave Desert in California. White-eared Pocket Mice are nocturnal and probably closely resemble Great Basin Pocket Mice in habits. Presumably they eat seeds, green vegetation, and insects, hibernate in winter, and do not have to have access to green vegetation or water to get the water they need to survive. Like other rodents in the family Heteromyidae (pocket mice, kangaroo mice, and kangaroo rats), they have a fur-lined pouch on each cheek, next to the mouth, that they use to transport seeds to their burrows.

The white-eared pocket mouse is known from two disjunct mountain ranges in southern California in the United States: the San Bernardino Mountains in San Bernardino County and the Tehachapi Mountains, in Kern, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties at elevations of about 3,500-6,000 feet. The two subspecies are separated by the San Gabriel Mountains. You can find the white-eared pocket mouse in the California deserts surrounding those two mountain ranges.