With a teeny 10-centimetre body, usually only venturing forth at night from its underground home in remote parts of Top End, it is no wonder the northern hopping mouse has so far escaped an official head count.

Key points: The mouse is listed as a vulnerable species

The mouse is listed as a vulnerable species It has only been spotted a handful of times on the mainland in the past 120 years

It has only been spotted a handful of times on the mainland in the past 120 years Rangers are conducting surveys to understand this tiny mammal better

The Anindilyakwa Land and Sea rangers on Groote Eylandt, off the north-east coast of Arnhem Land, are currently trying to survey the species.

It is listed as vulnerable under both Northern Territory and Commonwealth legislation, and is currently only known to occur on the island, with no recorded sightings on mainland Australia for many years.

"It's a really attractive little animal," said Katie Oxenham, IPA coordinator and ecologist with the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers.

The mouse is larger and more distinctive than the more common mouse many would recognise.

The tail can be up to one-and-a-half times as long as its body and it has big eyes, really big ears, a white belly, and a little tuft of fur on the end of its tail.

"It's called the hopping mouse because it hops like a kangaroo; it stands up on its hind feet and hops around like a kangaroo," Ms Oxenham said.

"We started doing some surveys for the species late last year and had some relatively good luck and recorded hopping mice in a number of locations, some of which they've been recorded in before.

"But also we recorded them in some locations where they had never been recorded.

"We're hoping that we can get a really good understanding of their distribution across the island."

Sorry, this video has expired The northern hopping mouse

Helicopter surveys for tiny mice

Rangers have captured recent footage of the elusive mouse, and local amateur photographer David Webb managed to take a photo that Ms Oxenham said was probably the best picture of the species in the wild taken to date.

The federally funded survey project has allowed rangers to use a helicopter to fly over remote parts of Groote Eylandt and spot signs of burrows from above.

"When it digs its burrows, it backfills the entrance and covers up the entrance with a pile of sand and then creates what we call 'pop holes', which are little vertical tunnels that go up to the surface from the main tunnel and it uses that to get in and out of its burrow," Ms Oxenham said.

"Where it backfills the burrows and leaves the pile of sand, we call that a spoil heap.

"And those spoil heaps are a good sign, they can be fairly easy to see."

There are other animals that create spoil heaps, so the giveaway that there is a northern hopping mouse in the house is the oval-shaped pop holes, usually with a diameter of about 3 centimetres, within 2 to 5 metres of spoil heap.

Rangers have been setting motion-sensitive cameras in the field, and reviewing the footage after a few weeks.

The project is due to finish by the end of June. It is too soon at the moment to estimate the current population.

Sparse sightings over 120 years

The species' "vulnerable" status is currently under review by Commonwealth authorities, and it could be upgraded to a more severe rating.

There is limited information available about the northern hopping mouse, but authorities believe introduced species and changes to fire regimes — towards more frequent and intense fires late in the dry season — have been its biggest threats over time.

All of the records or signs of the hopping mouse over the past several decades have occurred in the Anindilyakwa Indigenous Protected Area, on Groote Eylandt, or Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area in north-east Arnhem Land.

There is a single original record of a sighting in Cape York in Queensland 120 years ago, but it has not been spotted there again since.

There are records of mouse sightings from at least 30 years ago around the Roper River area of the Northern Territory, and the eastern coast and inland of Arnhem Land.

With the only known population now confined to Groote Eylandt, it is important to understand more about it for the future preservation of the species, Ms Oxenham said.

"Not just its distribution, but this project will lead on to further work about its ecology and what is required to manage threats to it," she said.

"It's possible it's still there [on the mainland], and hopefully it is, but we just don't know at the moment.