kangaroo rat
1
6.3
- noun
- /ˈkæŋɡəruː ræt/
- US
:
rata canguro
- As a desert day cools into night, a kangaroo rat emerges from its burrow.
- chisel-toothed kangaroo rat
- kangaroo rats and lizards
Examples
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And like the North American kangaroo rat and the North African fat sand rat, the South American plains viscacha rat also proved to have kidneys that produce highly concentrated urine.
Academic text (2003) -
Chisel-toothed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys microps) survives on a diet of salt-loving desert plants in the Great Basin Desert of the western United States.
Academic text (2003) -
Even among kangaroo rats, though, the chisel-toothed species is unusual.
Academic text (2003) -
The species belongs to the same family as the house mouse and the Norway and black rats, but it is only distantly related to the kangaroo rat.
Academic text (2003) -
They have significantly larger seeds than native species, so they are favored by the grain-eating kangaroo rats.
Academic text (2004) -
Because the kangaroo rats depend on non-native plant species for food and the non-native plant species depend upon the kangaroo rats to disturb their habitat continually, the relationship is mutualistic.
Academic text (2004) -
Because the kangaroo rats depend on non-native plant species for food and the non-native plant species depend upon the kangaroo rats to disturb their habitat continually, the relationship is mutualistic.
Academic text (2004) -
This chronic disturbance to soil and vegetation sometimes promotes the establishment of invasive species of plants that were originally imported as ornamentals from the Mediterranean, so that they constitute a very large proportion of the vegetation on giant kangaroo rat territories.
Academic text (2004) -
A chisel-toothed kangaroo rat bounces away across the parched sand at my feet.
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Chisel-toothed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys microps) survives on a diet of salt-loving desert plants in the Great Basin Desert of the western United States.
Synonyms
1
8.0
A small hopping animal that lives in deserts, often in North America and Mexico, and eats seeds
A small desert rodent called a kangaroo rat that lives in North America
A large kangaroo rat that jumps and lives in dry desert burrows
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is descriptive and literal: a 'kangaroo rat' is a type of rat with kangaroo-like jumping adaptations, so a learner who knows 'kangaroo' and 'rat' can infer it refers to a small, hopping rodent. This is a straightforward, non-idiomatic naming pattern found across languages and thus immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Kangaroo rat comes from the animal's long back legs and the way it jumps like a kangaroo, even though it is a 'rat', a small rodent. That's why the name describes this little desert jumper.