marsupial mouse

English

Noun

marsupial mouse (plural marsupial mice)

1. (Australia) Any of several small carnivorous marsupials of the family Dasyuridae, especially in the genera Sminthopsis and Antechinus. [from 19th c.]
   • 2011, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish, Vintage, published 2016, page 137:

     The Surgeon cut me short with a fierce uplift of his beetle brow—and for a dreadful moment I feared two of the many marsupial mice in my cell had leapt up onto his face […] .

See also

• bush mouse
• dunnart (Sminthopsis spp.)
• pouched mouse