Abstract
THE CARRYING OF YOUNG BY MAMMALS.—In discussing the life history of the woodland deer mouse (Peromyscua leucopus noveboracensis) E. Raymond Hall makes a side observation of interest (Jour. Mammalogy, August). In a hunting cabin in Kansas he disturbed a female mouse with four young, which in her haste to seek shelter she scattered upon the floor. Within thirty seconds the mother reappeared and picked up with her teeth one of the young, and so on until she had carried all to safe places. In each case she deliberately turned the young belly up, grasped it on the under side with her incisors, and, adjusting it slightly with her fore feet, scampered away. Recalling that squirrels and some other rodents are known to carry their young belly up, rather than by the back of the neck, as cats and dogs do theirs, the author suggests that it may be a universal, or at least general, habit of rodents to carry their young belly up, and of carnivores to carry their young back up. The point is a curious one, and the experience of readers of NATURE might help to solve the question.
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Research Items. Nature 122, 857–859 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122857a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122857a0