Unidan, AKA Ben Eisenkop, is an ecosystem ecologist who first rose to fame (infamy?) on Reddit by popping up in posts across the site, answering any queries and concepts pertaining to biology and ecology. Eisenkop is a columnist for Upvoted, where he’ll be spotlighting a new creature every week.

Living in the desert is tough: It’s hot, there’s very little water, and in many cases, because there’s few plants to provide cover, you’re exposed above ground. It can be difficult to eke out a living for even the most bad-ass of organisms like snakes, hawks and owls. The subject of today’s Bizarre Beasts is not a bad-ass in the traditional sense, in fact, it is easily the cutest animal I’ve covered in the series thus far (though the hagfish is pretty adorable, right?). Enter the jerboa.

Jerboas belong to the family of jumping rodents (family Dipodidae), which includes all sorts of little critters that, as you’d expect, are specialized in jumping! These little guys are found in the deserts of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia, comprising 10 different genera across their wide range. They are the best jumpers among all jumping rodents, mainly due to their elongated metacarpal bones (equestrian folks may know these better as cannon bones) which give extra spring in their step.

Jerboas are bipedal, hopping about like bite-sized kangaroos, using their long tails for balance. Researchers at Harvard have identified three different types of gait for the jerboas, a hop, a skip, and a full-out run. Since the jerboas have such large hindlimbs, many ignore their Tyrannosaurus-proportioned forearms, which they use to grab insects and plants to eat.

Since free water is so scarce in the desert, jerboas have evolved to use water from food and metabolic water to meet their needs. Metabolic water is produced through the oxidation of energy-containing molecules in food. For example, if you take the equation simple cellular respiration of glucose:

C6H12O6 (s) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l) + heat

You can see how it yields not only carbon dioxide and heat, but also water! While humans only get a small portion of their water via metabolic pathways, jerboas get so much water from their food that they can go their entire lives without ever taking a drink of water.

To go off of that equation a bit more, wondering how the jerboa dissipates that heat it generates? Look at the ears. The jerboa’s big ears are lined with blood vessels, allowing heat to be whisked away on the large surface area. For the biggest ears, here’s the first known footage of a long-eared jerboa (Euchoreutes naso) in the wild, filmed in 2007:

One question we still haven’t answered, though, is why do the jerboas have such long legs in the first place? As I mentioned in the first paragraph, they’re not traditional bad-asses like owls, but—unfortunately for the jerboa—they still have to deal with them! Predator evasion is top priority for the little jerboa and its long legs give it a big advantage. Jerboas can hop nearly three meters horizontally or even vertically to escape predation and have a top speed of nearly 15 miles per hour, pretty good for a little rodent! Here’s a video courtesy of the BBC showing a jerboa using those skills to escape from a Rüppell’s fox (Vulpes rueppellii):