The spiny mouse is an unassuming rodent, but it’s armed with a very special tail.
The rodent’s secret was revealed when evolutionary biologist Edward Stanley of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville put a museum specimen of a spiny mouse (Acomys spp.) in an X-ray machine as part of a multi-institutional project to develop 3-D digital models of all vertebrate life.
It was a “nondescript looking” mouse with slightly spiky fur, Stanley says. But in the initial X-ray, its tail looked unusual. “It looked kind of dark and weird,” he says.
A more detailed CT scan showed the mouse’s whole tail was covered in overlapping bony plates within the skin, under the surface layers.
2023-05-24 10:00:00
Post from www.sciencenews.org