Author Description

This volume covers seventy-eight species with concise life history accounts revealing a surprising wealth and variety of both rodents and bats, which are able to exploit Pakistan's varied climate and topography. This field guide describes the special adaptations which have enabled some species to live and reproduce in the harshest of hot desert environments, as well as frigid alpine regions. The fluctuating cycles of population abundance, then scarcity, of some small mammals is revealed in the accounts of their reproductive biology. The grain storing habits of some rodents reveals the detrimental impact on man and his food crops. The beneficial effects both from fruit pollination and seed dispersal of valuable trees by some bats are also discussed. Nearly every species is illustrated either with photographs, or by pen and ink drawings by the author. It is hoped that this field guide will help to create more interest and awareness of these tiny animals which live among us, yet remain largely unnoticed.