Southern grasshopper mice are omnivorous with 75-90% of their diet consisting of scorpions, grasshoppers, beetles, small vertebrates, and even other rodents.
Southern grasshopper mice are omnivorous, but have a mainly carnivorous diet, feeding almost entirely on arthropods. Both vertebrates and seeds are minor components of the diet.
10-25% of the southern grasshopper mouse’s diet consists of seeds, plants, and vegetables. Less than 5% is seeds.
The remaining 75-90% includes mainly scorpions, but also grasshoppers, beetles, and small vertebrates, including salamanders, lizards, frogs, small mammals, and other rodents, such as Peromyscus, Perognathus, Microtus, the Los Angeles little pocket mouse (Perognathus longimembris), and the southern marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis). In 1929, laboratory studies revealed the diet was composed of 56% grasshoppers,
crickets, caterpillars, and moths, and 21% ground and darkling beetles.
• Image | ©️ Alan Harper, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
• Sources | (Brylski, n.d.; Horner, Taylor, & Padykula, 1964; McCarty, 1975; Kester, 1999; McCarty, 1975; The Wikimedia Foundation, 2020)
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