Mice, Rats, Mice, Beavers, Mice, Squirrels, and More Mice... 

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When you think you've escaped the mice, there is one mouse out there to really mess with you: the titmouse. It's a bird.

"And while we're on the subject of upsetting things -" Ad starts.

Size classification mouse -> rat -> big ass rat

I am watching this video in the company of two of my dwarf rats, Puck and Peter Quince, while sharing apple crumble with them. I'm afraid in spite of all my attempts to explain to them that this video is a very important lesson about their ancestors and relations, they remain distracted - much more excited about the crumble. I have been hoping for a rodent video for ages though so I am psyched enough for all of us 😄

If rats are big mice, and squirrels are, as we say in the midwest, tree rats, then squirrels are simply big tree mice.

really the whole mice phylogeny is like that astrounauts meme... "wait it's all mice?" "always has been"

Beavers are always my go to example of how difficult it is to reconstruct fossil animals. A paleontologist in the distant future might look at a beaver skeleton and just classify it as yet another moderately oversized rodent, the Cenozoic was full of those things and the all look roughly the same, big rat. A really good paleontologist with a well preserved fossil might look at the wear patterns on the teeth and make computer models of the jaw to come to the wild theory that these things probably ate wood pulp, they might look at the shape of the tail vertebrae and conclude that they might have supported a paddle shaped tail, which would imply that they were good swimmers. But even in this wild scenario where the futures best paleontologists decide to waste there time studying an unremarkable rodent fossil, I doubt they would ever even suspect the dam building. Makes you think just how many extinct organisms had amazing behaviors that we will never know about because behaviors don't fossilize.

Ok, that seque with "look at the bones!" "OK, let's" was SO CLEVER!!

Concidering even the first mammals were fairly rodent like, it makes sense that everything would be mouse-coded.

So much to cover in these videos. At least you won't be running out of phylogeny material, because there is always more.

This video has everything, it's got mice, mice, it even has mice!

The groundhog family who lives under my porch and I are thoroughly enjoying this video together. Love your content, I’m so happy you continued to cover different families and genera like this!

Recently I saw a video calling muskrats “beavers” and thought “someday Clint is going to have something to say about this.” Little did I know, TODAY’S THE DAY

Saturday = Clint's Reptiles Day! 👍

This has comfortably been the most confusing Clint phylogeny vid so far. Think I’m just gonna call all mammals mice just to be safe

Australia’s golden bellied otter rat or Rakali is an interesting one and missed. It is native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. They have learnt to eat poisonous cane toads by flipping them over and eating into their under belly avoiding eating the skin.

PSA: don't do a shot every time Clint says "mice" in this video - you might die But also I had no idea Muskrats were basically giant American mice, that's super neat! Keep it up with these phylogenies!

This video has been certified ADORABLE.

My dad always called squirrels "fuzzy tailed rats". A childhood friend from Brazil once told me Iowa was weird because our monkeys were rats.

Sooner than later would be awesome on the squirrel video😊 I'm a fan of chipmunks, too. These phylogeny videos awakened a part of me that I think I forgot when I got my full time job. (Creatures! All of the creatures!)

You forgot the New York Giant Pizza Rat! 😂👌🐀🍕

Jerboa is wise in the ways of the desert.

My Chinchilla Hugo is sulking now. He feels very left out.

I could feel myself spiralling to insanity with Clint trying to escape the mice in this one 0_0

Loved the Holy Grail snippet with Tim the Enchanter! 😂🤣

I discovered this on my own a few years back: that "Rat" and "Mouse" are thrown around without any regard to relation, and pretty much based entirely on size and general appearance. I ran into a similar problem when trying to figure out the difference between ducks and geese.

update from Arizona -- just yesterday I heard some folks referring to gophers as "sand beavers." so, common names strike again?

If I remember anything from Latin class, it's the phrase "mus in matella"- a mouse in a chamber pot. It means in over your head.

Squirrels scare me more than snakes. They are too shifty. Also National Lampoon Christmas Vacation taught me to never turn my back on a squirrel or stick my face in random trees.

You know what, if anybody else said "weirdest mammal" about anything that's not a Platypus I'd think they were crazy or forgetting the Platypus, but somehow, I expect Clint will make a strong case for the Naked Mole Rat

Clint, I'm sure you get this all the time, but I am so glad your channel exists. Your sense of humor and enthusiasm makes it easy to want to root for your success, and the whole team's hard work makes it fun to learn about the cool critters you cover. Keep it up brother Clint & team

When i was a kid, i was walking home from school one day. passed a guy mowing his lawn. Some how right behind him was a baby squirrel. Took it home and raised it. Was a really good and fun pet.

Yes, please, more rodents. They're super cool. They are also arguably the cutest mammals of them all.

I'd be interested in your opinion on Pokémon categories and how you would construct Pokémon phylogenies!

Living in New York, it's not a TRUE rat unless it lives in the subway, bites tourists, lays it's eggs in the shoes of homeless people, and only uses its leathery wings to fly.

Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a room. A rubber room. A rubber room with rats. Rats make me crazy.

"Don't get into rodent taxonomy. You will regret it." - Ben G. Thomas, "Every Time Things Have Evolved Into Moles"

For me it's always the info he throws in as a side note that blows my mind. humans are so closely related to rodents?!? And that's why we can get so many diseases from them?? the more you know

Sir I paid good money to lean this at college! ur giving this info out in such an entertaining and engaging way, makes me want to thank you for refreshing my love for learning about the little things that make every animal unique!

Mice to meet all these guys.

I was worried Clint was about to tell my the Capibaras were not rodents. Instead, everything is mice, I can live with this.

This episode was a mess 😂 I love it!

i love learning about the relationships between species and groups of animals. thank you Clint for making such high quality and informative content! i had no idea that primates and rodents were so closely related o:

I adore rodents. And I have a friend who lives on the Olympic Peninsula and had a mountain beaver show up in his yard. Was really cool. I just get Douglas squirrels get real chatty at our window. And beavers to!

I encountered a deer mouse in the vestibule of a McDonalds, and it was so gorgeous it looked like a Christmas card illustration come to life. I very gently encouraged it outside with my handily pointed boot toe. I am a rodent fan in general, but man, the deer mouse was ADORABLE.

Whenever I want to be confused about things I thought I knew, there's always Clint going on about something headache-inducing. Love it!

Soooo glad I found your channel! Your enthusiasm is contagious

I used to have giant squirrel popsicles in my back yard, at least in the winter. The rest of the year they were just giant squirrels with no visible tails. Or groundhogs. Or woodchucks. You know, whichever. How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

I love all of these videos! Learning so much about how all these awesome species are related and even hearing about many for the first time!

My wife and I were born and raised in northern Illinois, where we frequently encountered squirrels and developed a deep affection for these delightful creatures in our neighborhood. Having recently relocated to East Central Kentucky, we have noticed a distinct absence of squirrels in our vicinity, and we greatly miss the presence of our furry-tailed friends. In Illinois, my colleagues affectionately nicknamed me "Mr. Squirrelly" due to my enthusiasm for squirrels. Both my wife and I are biologists with a profound love and passion for all things related to science. We would be thrilled if you could produce a video on squirrels, highlighting the various species and their unique characteristics. Such a video would not only satiate our curiosity but also reignite our joy in observing and learning about these fascinating animals.

Thank you, Clint, for educating me on the creatures that terrify me more than anything else. Pushing through the discomfort of looking at rodents was worth it to learn that everything is mice

funfact: Jerboa are called Springmaus (Jumpmouse) in german!

whoever named the mountain beaver, also called sewellel, was likely just looking at a pelt.

I'm surprised there wasn't a quick joke about Mus sounding the same as Moose lol

'Bouncy stilt mice' - love that description! ❤

Some things to add: The poorly named “Mountain Beaver” by all accounts should be called “Sewellel”. If you delve deeper into the phylogeny of the Cricetidae, it becomes apparent that muskrats are just giant Nearctic water voles, and lemmings are just short-tailed tundra voles. Funnily enough, my childhood mammal book (which was A. published in the 1970s and well before my actual birth, B. claims the “cliff thing” to be true about lemmings, and C. had almost no cladistics at all except for a vague phylogeny of mammals at the beginning and another one for fossil elephants) claimed that muskrats and lemmings are voles and turned out to be correct by accident. When you cover the murid rodents in their respective video, do at least give a mention to some of the Australian mice that went extinct and the one (Gould’s Mouse) that came back from extinction; a persistent misconception is that all rodents in Australia are nonindigenous pests, when in fact many are of conservation concern in their own right. Finally, do make sure to explain where the Anomaluromorpha fits into the tree. You seem to be copying the phylogeny on Wikipedia, and that clade isn’t on that tree. Looking at some scholarly phylogenies, it seems that suborder is actually closer to the Muroidea/Castoroidea group than squirrels are.

I just love rodents. I have mice, hamsters gerbils and guinea pigs as pets. Can you one day do a video on the African egg eating snake. I'm interested in a snake I don't have to feed rodent.

Love how Clint smiles when he says "You'd probably be burned at the stake!"

A huge fan of squirrels here, back in the late 80's I decided my first tattoo would be one. Took a while but got it done '00. Love them so much that some still call me squirrel 🐿 🥰

The Muus is Loose In the Huus

My african grey does not like members of these clades and will act quite viciously toward them.

Holy moly the hamster rat looks like a Roborovski hamster ! Also I’m so glad you did a mouse vid as I’m a proud mouse mum

I've never heard of a giant cloud rat before, and it is the cutest thing ever! I learned something new today, and it's adorable! Thanks!

Rat is not a clade. It is polyphyletic. This means it's a term that applies to different species that are not all one clade.

I don't think I'll ever tire of hearing Clint say 'mice'.

I don't know how to tell you this but in German, Shrew are called "Spitzmäuse" which means "pointy mice". It never ends!

I kinda thought Mountain Beavers were called that not because of any living resemblance to actual Beavers, but because if you make a hat out of their fur, it resembles an actual Beaver hat, and so you could get a faux beaver hat while up in the mountains where there are no real Beavers.

You're screwing with us and loving every minute. We're enjoying it, too, so keep it up!

There is an absolutely adorable video of a hibernating dormouse snoring

I could watch these videos all day, I wish someone had the energy to make a video describing each and every species in detail. I would love to see what kind of weirdo’s exist in the world.

“Wait, it’s all mice?” “Always has been.”

There's a hagfish in every clade.

Hey now, lemmings do the whole cliff thing. If Disney pushes them.

18:47 - I love that I can hear your crew laughing in the background! 😂

10:55 - Appreciating the Sheer Delight in Clint's eyes 🐭

No matter where they are from or how they are related, we can agree, every mouse is adorable.

i really love this series on the families and(/or?) clades of various aminals, Clint. evolutionary biology is so fascinating. and you’re great at presenting it, thank you ❤

Rodents especially the smaller ones are irresistibly cute.

Absolutely loving these phylogeny videos!! Thank you so much for all the work you do!

The only reason I have never gotten a rat as a pet is their short lifespan. They are wonderful pets. Loyal and sweet.

Mountain Beavers were probably named by French trappers and fur traders. 'This beaver pelt looks a little odd...' 'Oh, uhhh... mountain beaver!' 'ohhhhh...'

Never seen Clint so distraught but happy to expose the shenanigans of terrible phylogeny names. Usually its just the common names that cause distress....

Your videos are well conceived, beautifully written, excellently delivered, and satisfyingly edited. Thank you very much

Can’t we just all be single cell organisms like the original life on earth? It’d make all this easier to remember.

It's a pleasure to have a zoological geek-out fest with you and all the other stinkin' rad nerds out there in RU-vid land!!!

I like "bouncy stiltmice". In Dutch, it yields a nice alliteration into the bargain: "stuitersteltmuizen".

Mountain Beavers are the Drop Bears of Squirrels

Yes pleaaase I very much want the part 2 to this! You can't just cut the clades in half and leave us hanging 😭

Clint I am STOKED at the possibility of a squirrel video!!! I currently own a couple of Graphiurus murinus and hope to have a Glaucomys sabrinus in future. In the meantime thanks for this one because as a lifelong lover of mice, rats, hamsters, and essentially anything tiny and fuzzy, it was a delight to know how much more closely related they are than I originally thought! I mostly only ever paid much attention to the genus of things, figuring beyond that was above my pay grade as a hobbyist, but you are indoctrinating me into the concept of clades. XD

Thanks, Clint, now I feel like I'm justified telling people my pet deer mice aren't mice... they're hamsters.

Just starting this episode and when Clint mentioned that none of the first group were native to America, but were introduced, I immediately thought of Fivel, from An American Tale. Also, when he mentioned the largest mouse in The Colosseum, I was hoping he’d make a reference to the ROUSs from The Princess Bride. Maybe those will be mentioned later.

I've had pet rats since 2010, with a 6 month break in between... when I got Gerbils. Then got rats again :') Also mice aren't new to me. I still have one pet mice left. She is about 3y old now and I expect her passing any day now.. sadly. Two rats left who are 2y3m old now. They are such amazing pets. I followed the National Pouched Rat Society for a while. Also learned about how to care for them and learned they are not for me. On top of that, I would have to check if they're even allowed where I live. They're also called hero rats for they are trained to detect landmines.

I screamed when you said my Queen the Giant African Pouched Rat wasn’t a RAT?!?!

This video had more mind blowers jam packed into one video than I think any other individual video you’ve made which is saying a lot because all your videos blow my mind lol Thank you for taking the time to make these cuz if you didn’t I’m fairly confident I’d never learn so much of this incredible information

My 7yo daughter and I love your videos. Your videos are entertaining and informative. You also have a very gentle personality. Thank you

I just learned more than I have ever learned in one day😂 and it’s summer vacation to!

Run away! Run away!! Lagomorphs are scary.

And on a sidenote: a nutria in Dutch is called a "beverrat". I just looked up where in the rodent family tree it sits. Turns out that beavers and rats are much more closely related to each other than either of them are to "beaver rats". Because of course they are. :)

One of my two roosters is refusing to go to bed, but instead insisting on watching this video with me.