Bocage's African fat mouse (''Steatomys bocagei'') is an extant species of

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and Mandible, lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal specie ...

indigenous to

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

, the

Republic of the Congo The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo), is a country located on the western coast of Central ...

, and the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

(DRC). Given the distribution of the species across the Angolan Plateau and south-west of the DRC throughout central Africa, the probability of a 'large population', and the security of its habitat, the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

(IUCN) recognises ''S. bocagei'' as stable. Whereas taxonomies early in the twentieth century posit ''S. bocagei'' as a species, more contemporary records from 1977 onwards identify it as indistinguishable from ''S. pratensis''. In 1998, however, Crawford-Cabral proposed that the additional pair of teats in ''S. bocagei'' required separation from ''S. pratensis''. Subsequent to Crawford-Cabral's publication, Wilson and Reader maintain in ''

Mammal Species of the World ''Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference'' is a standard reference work in mammalogy giving descriptions and Bibliographic database, bibliographic data for the known species of mammals. It is now in its third edition, ...

'' that the size of these species also requires differentiation, where ''S. bocagei'' is significantly larger than ''S. pratensis'' and is unique or otherwise corresponds to ''S. opimus''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1768191 Mammals described in 1892 Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas Mammals of Angola Mammals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mammals of the Republic of the Congo Steatomys