Marsupial Mice in GURPS
The majority of dasyurids are small animals that resemble mice, shrews, or squirrels and are often referred to as marsupial mice. This resemblance often vanishes when they open their mouths, for the jaws are lines with a great number of sharp teeth and equipped with a wide gape. There are a great many varieties of these creatures, which typically prey on insects, spiders, scorpions, and various small lizards and frogs.
- Mulgaras Dasycercus sp. are arid adapted dasyurids from Australia's interior which do not need to drink. They are known to devour their prey from head to tail, leaving the skin inside out.
- Dasyures are found in New Guinea. They are terrestrial. There are numerous genera.
- Antechinus Antechinus sp., Pseudantechinus sp., are small agile shrew-like animals from across Australia. Size varies depending on species, from 170 g to 16 g. The males live only one year, at the end of which they go into a mating frenzy, breed, and die. The females have an open pouch, her young must hang on to her nipples for dear life as she goes about her business. By the time they are weaned, the brood weighs for times as much as the mother, who by this time is exhausted from nursing them and dragging them around. A female antechinus commonly gives birth to more infants than she has nipples, and the weakest lose out and die.
- Phascogales Phascogale sp. are nocturnal arboreal predators with a fluffy bottle-brush tail. Like the antechinus, the males only live one year before dieing after a sex-crazed orgy. At least the females have enough sense to drop their offspring off in a den once they become to cumbersome to drag around.
- Ningaui Ningaui sp. are tiny - no more than 10 grams - and live throughout Australia.
- Dunnarts Sminthopsis sp. are nocturnal, terrestrial dasyurids from Australia's arid regions. Habitat varies by species, and may include desert, spinifex grassland, scrub, or sclerophyll forests. Depending on species, mass may range from 10 to 70 grams. One species, the fat-tailed dunnart Sminthopsis crassicaudata, goes into torpor - effectively hibernation - every day and wakes up at night to feed.
- Planigales Planigale sp. have wide, flattened heads for poking into crevices to find food. They are found throughout mainland Australia and parts of New Guinea.
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