The Chinese bamboo rat (''Rhizomys sinensis'') is a species of

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...

in the family

Spalacidae The Spalacidae, or spalacids, are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. They are native to eastern Asia, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe. It includes the blind mole-rats, bamboo rats, m ...

found in southern China, northern

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, and northern

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

. Its habitat is

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

thickets usually at high elevations,

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts ...

forests, and

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

Description

The head and body length is with a tail of and the weight is . The fur is soft with no guard hairs as are seen in the closely related hoary bamboo rat (''Rhizomys pruinosus''). On the side of the face and the crown the fur is dark greyish brown and on the body paler greyish brown. The under parts are scantily haired.

Behaviour

The Chinese bamboo rat is solitary, except during the breeding season. It breeds all year round, with a spring peak; litters of two to four young (eight maximum) are born naked, and are weaned at three months. Territory is marked by four to seven soil mounds marking plugged entrances (20 to 40 cm high and 50 to 80 cm across). Burrows are 20 to 30 cm deep and up to 45 m long. Escape tunnels are always at the ready, loosely plugged with soil. The nest chamber is 20 to 25 cm across and is lined with bamboo leaves. Mostly, it feeds on bamboo shoots and roots, usually on the surface, and moves on after about a year as the food supply becomes depleted. Predators include the

snow leopard The snow leopard (''Panthera uncia''), also known as the ounce, is a felid in the genus '' Panthera'' native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is es ...

and the

red panda The red panda (''Ailurus fulgens''), also known as the lesser panda, is a small mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It has dense reddish-brown fur with a black belly and legs, white-lined ears, a mostly white muzzle ...

Status

The Chinese bamboo rat has a very wide range, is common in some localities, is considered a plantation pest in parts of China, and is presumed to have a large total population. The main threat it faces is being hunted by humans for food. The Chinese bamboo rat has been farmed since the 1990s as a source of meat in southern China. In 2011, the number of farmed animals was more than 30 million in China, mainly distributed in the Guangxi,

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

and

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...

Provinces. The

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of nat ...

has listed it as being of "

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

Parasites

Not much is known about the parasites of the Chinese Bamboo rat. The protozoans '' Cryptosporidium'' spp. and ''

Giardia duodenalis ''Giardia duodenalis'', also known as ''Giardia intestinalis'' and ''Giardia lamblia'', is a flagellated parasitic microorganism of the genus ''Giardia'' that colonizes the small intestine, causing a diarrheal condition known as giardiasis. The ...

'' and the nematode ''

Trichinella spiralis ''Trichinella spiralis'' is a viviparous nematode parasite, occurring in rodents, pigs, bears, hyenas and humans, and is responsible for the disease trichinosis. It is sometimes referred to as the "pork worm" due to it being typically encount ...

'' have been reported. A 2021 study revealed that 4.6 % of farmed animals Hunan Province, south-central China, were infected by the protozoan parasite '' Blastocystis'' sp., a

zoonotic A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human. ...

pathogen.

References

* John Edward Gray. Characters of three new genera, including two new species of Mammalia from China. "Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London”. 1, s. 94–96, 1831. Zoological Society of London {{Taxonbar, from=Q2583168 Rhizomys Mammals described in 1831 Taxa named by John Edward Gray Taxonomy articles created by Polbot