The African grass rat (Arvicanthis niloticus) is a species of rodent in the family Murinae.

The tail is shorter than the head and body, densely covered with hair, blackish above and white-yellowish below.

It is mainly distributed in the Sahel and the sudano-zambesian Savanna belt, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Ethiopia,[5] Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.

The Nile rat has gained traction as a useful nutritional model to study Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM).

The Nile Rat gets Metabolic Syndrome that develops into diet-induced Type 2 Diabetes that is similar to human T2DM: insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, increased body fat, hypertension, elevated Triglycerides with decreased High-Density Lipoproteins, and eventually hyperglycemia and beta cell failure resulting in depressed insulin and end-stage diabetes that includes severe ketosis.