Illustration: Biodiversity Heritage Library

This Friday the 13th, we’re bringing you a carnivorous rodent known as a “werewolf mouse” for its fierce predatory ways and tendency to “howl.” Grasshopper mice are desert dwellers whose prey includes snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and even other mice! The pint-sized hunters are fearless in the face of one of the desert’s most dangerous stings: the bark scorpion’s. It turns out that in grasshopper mice, the scorpion’s venom acts to block pain instead of inflaming it. And why all the howling? These high-pitched vocalizations are used to share information with other grasshopper mice.