Tennessee’s occurrence record for the white-footed mouse runs to 8,330 entries, by far the largest count of any mammal on this list, and the reason has more to do with decades of small-mammal research than with any one summer’s mouse crop.
A generalist that spans the whole state
Records reach from Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the high east, through Cherokee National Forest and the Ridge-and-Valley country, all the way to Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park on the Mississippi River bluffs above Memphis. That coast-to-coast spread, for a Tennessee mammal, reflects a genuine habitat generalist: this mouse nests in tree cavities, stumps, and brush piles in nearly any wooded or edge habitat the state offers, from mountain cove forest to West Tennessee bottomland hardwoods.
A record built by scientists, not sightseers
Only 65 of the 8,330 records came through iNaturalist; the rest sit in GBIF, mostly specimen and trapping data from small-mammal research. Peromyscus mice are among the most heavily studied wild rodents in North America, used constantly in ecological field surveys, so a record this large says more about how often researchers trap this species for study than about it outnumbering every other mammal in the state.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the white-footed mouse S5, secure, in Tennessee, and it’s native to the state. As a key food source for owls, foxes, and snakes across nearly every habitat Tennessee offers, it plays an outsized ecological role for an animal most people never notice climbing through the brush at night.
Full species profile
