Mammals of Iowa Field Guide

Iowa has a rich diversity of mammals, ranging in form and function from the one third-of-an-ounce western harvest mouse which summits blades of grass to eat seeds in Iowa’s prairies to the over 1,000 pound bison whose diet shapes the community of grasses on which it grazes. Our fellow mammals enrich the lives of Iowans from city lots to rural farmsteads. Few sights rival that of a flight of bats at dusk on a warm summer evening, the passing flash of a gray fox in the headlights on a night drive, or the beauty of a herd of snow-covered white-tailed deer on a winter day. This guide was written to capture that beauty and tell the stories of Iowa’s mammals.