Sadly no longer in the collection; as numbers have plummeted at both Plzen and Praha I fear this species will not be found in European collections all that much longer.
Considering that Percival's Spiny Mouse was all-but-unknown after it was discovered, an understandable omission - for all intents and purposes everything known about it has been discovered under the name of Mount Kulal Spiny Mouse.
To be honest the taxonomy of Spiny Mice appears to me to be very unreliable and confusing.
I have personally kept two species and looked after another couple through work. The one in the photo looks remarkably like one species I kept years ago, then called the Egyptian if I remember correctly ?
A bit like the Arabian Spiny Mouse, as it was called for many years, which is very similar to the Turkish at first glance.
Can anyone list the correct current taxonomy of the spiny mouse genus?
(TLD maybe ??)
I have a friend who worked with a number of these species and still keeps these. I don't think they will die out just yet, but as only 1.1 was imported initially inbreeding is bound to be an issue. Many zoos will not take the effort to keep and breed rodents...
This species does look similar to A.cahirinus cahirinus, the black subspecies of the Egyptian, however there are differences (mostly size, but other more subtle ones) and i am confident that A.percivalii is not what you were keeping.
As far as I am aware, the following list from Wikipedia is correct; however I believe there has been precious little work done on the genus so I suspect that once someone has put the effort in, quite a bit of lumping and splitting may occur. The taxa in bold are held in public collections within Europe, though I suspect some of the others are in private hands.
In addition to these, there are two species lacking a common name, having recently been split from the South African Spiny Mouse - Acomys muzei and Acomys ngurui.
As far as I am aware, the following list from Wikipedia is correct; however I believe there has been precious little work done on the genus so I suspect that once someone has put the effort in, quite a bit of lumping and splitting may occur. The taxa in bold are held in public collections within Europe, though I suspect some of the others are in private hands.
In addition to these, there are two species lacking a common name, having recently been split from the South African Spiny Mouse - Acomys muzei and Acomys ngurui.
