Common mole-rat
species of mammal
The common mole-rat, African mole-rat, or Hottentot mole-rat, (Cryptomys hottentotus) is a burrowing rodent found in Southern Africa, in particular in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It also occurs in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It is a species in the subfamily Bathyerginae.
Taxonomy
René Primevère Lesson was the first to describe the common mole-rat in 1826, based on an animal captured near Paarl, and called it Bathyergus hottentotus. The following year, the Dutch zoologist Anton Brants described a specimen from the eastern part of the Cape Colony which he named Bathyergus caecutiens. In 1828, Andrew Smith described Bathyergus ludwigii. Around 1900 these little mole rats were no longer considered to fit into the genus Bathyergus, and various forms were described in the genus Georychus, namely G. exenticus in 1899 by Édouard Louis Trouessart, G. jorisseni in 1909 by Henry Lyster Jameson, G. albus in 1913 and G. vandamii in 1917, both by Austin Roberts. The same Roberts described two more forms in 1924, but now under the current genus name Cryptomys, namely C. cradockensis and C. transvaalensis. However, the current combination was already made in 1906 by Oldfield Thomas and Harold Schwann, but with an unnecessary addition: Cryptomys hottentotus talpoides. In 1964, Gerrit de Graaff in his dissertation considers all these forms as belonging to the same species and thus all other names are synonyms of Cryptomys hottentotus.
The public source identifies “Common mole-rat” as species of mammal. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Common, mole-rat and species.
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This entry incorporates text from “Common mole-rat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.