A True Underdog…or Undermouse (A Guest Post)

By Spencer Henkel

People love a good underdog story, and nowhere is that image more embodied than in the rodents that live in deserts. In the desert there are two main problems that animals must face: it is way too hot and way too dry. You would think that rodents, the smallest of mammals, would not have much difficulty surviving in this kind of habitat. You might think that they would need far less food and water than their larger neighbors like reptiles and birds. Unfortunately, this is not the case; in fact, rodents’ small size actually makes life harder for them in such harsh conditions. Rodents gain and lose body heat faster through surface exchange with their environment, their highly active lifestyle requires a lot of food and a high metabolism, which generates a lot of extra heat that must be dispersed, and the distance they can travel to find food and water is extremely limited. Desert rodents must find ways to deal with all these issues, a tremendous feat for such tiny creatures.


Photo of a Golden Spiny Mouse (Acomys russatus) in Israel
by Mickey Samuni-Blank at Wikimedia Commons.

The most pressing concern of any animal that lives in the desert is making sure its body has enough water to carry it through the day. Needless to say, water can be hard to come by in such arid lands, and what water is present is usually found in seeds, tubers, and other plant material. Rodents will find and take in this water, but they face another problem: the contents of their diet are very salty. The rodents must now find a way to get rid of this excess salt while still holding onto a fair amount of water, for they cannot afford to simply excrete a steady stream of urine like we can. They must call upon a chemical from their brain, vasopressin, to help them out with this process. Vasopressin is an antidiuretic hormone, what I like to call an “anti-makes-you-pee”. It is made in the hypothalamus part of the brain, and when called upon it exits the pituitary gland and travels by blood to the kidneys. Once there, vasopressin causes the tiny blood vessels in the kidneys to clench up, slowing the flow of blood and increasing the time water has to be reabsorbed before urine is produced. When Nature eventually does call, the rodents will have made a small amount of urine that rids them of a whole lot of salt.

Now the rodents must turn to the other issue at hand: keeping cool. Water plays an active role in cooling an animal’s body by evaporation through sweating, panting, urinating, and defecating. Unfortunately, as with the salt in their diet, rodents can’t afford to lose all that water if they want their insides to keep functioning. So instead, rodents will lower their metabolisms. This reduces the amount of heat generated inside the body, so their core temperatures will decrease. A lower metabolism will also reduce the amount of water the rodents need to cool themselves down. However, if this process keeps up, the animal could die of hypothermia, ironically. So to keep that from happening, these rodents increase the amount of heat generated by their brown fat, masses of fat found primarily in animals that hibernate. This tissue will keep the animal’s core body temperature stable even when their metabolism slows way down.

In spite of their size, rodents actually have a rather tough time surviving in the desert. Yet they have found efficient ways of dealing with such extreme challenges. They can conserve enough water to live while still filtering out a great deal of salt, and they can slow down their own heat production while maintaining stable body temperatures. It is indeed quite a feat when the smallest of mammals succeeds in living in one of the harshest places on earth!

Sources Cited

SCHWIMMER, H., & HAIM, A. (2009). Physiological adaptations of small mammals to desert ecosystems Integrative Zoology, 4 (4), 357-366 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-4877.2009.00176.x