desert dormouse
a rarely seen or captured small rodent of Central Asia. Weighing less than 28 grams (1 ounce), the desert dormouse has a stout rounded body 8 to 10 cm (3.1 to 3.9 inches) long and a slightly shorter fine-haired tail of 6 to 8 cm. Its gray fur is long, soft, and dense, and its underside is white. The molt of this species is unique in that patches of both skin and hair are sloughed off and replaced by a dense new growth. Other rodents replace their hair during the molt but not the skin. The upper incisor teeth are large, but the cheek teeth are very small, barely jutting above the gums
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| a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
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