jumping mouse

English
woodland jumping mouse (Napaeozapus insignis)

Noun

jumping mouse (plural jumping mice)

  1. Any species of the taxonomic subfamily Zapodinae or family Zapodidae of rodents, variously endemic to North America or China.
    • 1953, Lowell Sumner, Joseph Scattergood Dixon, Birds and Mammals of the Sierra Nevada, page 423:
      The jumping mouse is little larger than a house mouse and has a very long, scaly, untufted tail, one-third longer than the head and body. […] In fact, various observers have found that jumping mice with injured or amputated tails tumble over and are as helpless as a ship without a rudder.
    • 1954, Lloyd Glenn Ingles, Mammals of California and Its Coastal Waters, page 256:
      In some respects a jumping mouse resembles kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice in habits and appearance. A jumping mouse may readily be distinguished from these animals, however, by its lack of fur-lined cheek pouches and by its preference for, or nearness to, moist habitats instead of arid places.
    • 1999, Marcia Bonta, Appalachian Summer, page 138:
      That was when we realized that we have two species of jumping mice on the mountain.

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