The hispid cotton rat is one of the most-recorded small mammals in Louisiana, with 1872 records reaching from East Baton Rouge and Lafayette west into the coastal prairie parishes and north to Caddo and Kisatchie National Forest. Wherever thick grass meets water or woods, this stocky, grizzled rodent is likely to be present.
An animal of thick grass
Cotton rats live in dense ground cover: marsh margins, weedy fields, ditch banks, and the rank grass along refuge levees. They cut well-worn runways through the thatch and hide woven grass nests inside it. The coarse, salt-and-pepper coat and short, thinly haired tail set them apart from the sleeker rice rats that share Louisiana’s wetlands. Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge, and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge all hold records.
A prey engine that runs all year
Cotton rats do not hibernate, they are active by day and night, and in Louisiana’s mild climate they can breed in nearly every month. That makes them a year-round food supply for the hawks, owls, herons, and snakes working the same grass, and it is why a quiet walk along a grassy levee so often turns up movement in the thatch.
Status in Louisiana
NatureServe ranks the hispid cotton rat S5, Secure, in Louisiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
