The Beach Vole Lives on a Single Island Off the Coast of Massachusetts

The beach vole is a little rodent that, if you saw one in the wild, you may mistake it for a mouse. Of course, since Muskeget Island off the coast of Massachusetts is the only site in the world where these voles exist, if you did encounter one in the wild, you would undoubtedly be there.

The island is about 2.6 square kilometers, or slightly more than one square mile, in size. The vole is probably a branch off of the meadow vole found on the mainland. It most likely arrived on the island some point in the last 3,000 years and evolved in a different way.

The small animals, which are only 7.5 inches long, graze on the grasses that flourish on their island home. There isn't much else there than poison ivy and beach grass, but if the weather were to deteriorate sufficiently, the entire community may suffer from being swept out.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Suborder: Myomorpha
Superfamily: Muroidea
Family: Cricetidae
Subfamily: Arvicolinae
Tribe: Arvicolini
Genus: Microtus
Species: M. breweri