Our inclusion of this species in Myomyscus is provisional. It has been placed in Rattus (Ellerman, 1941), Myomyscus (or Myomys) (G. M. Allen, 1939; D. H. S. Davis, 1965; Hill and Carter, 1941), Praomys (see references in Crawford-Cabral, 1989b), or regarded as a species of Mastomys (Crawford-Cabral, 1989b, 1998; Misonne, 1974). Ansell (1978) and Ellerman et al. (1953) thought it morphologically similar to M. shortridgei, which they treated as a subspecies of M. angolensis. In their review of Mastomys systematics, Granjon et al. (1997b) transferred angolensis to Myomys and retained shortridgei in Mastomys. Incorporation of M. angolensis in phylogenetic analyses derived from morphological and molecular data is needed to clarify its relationship. Myomyscus angolensis is either sympatric (Hill and Carter, 1941; Crawford-Cabral, 1983, 1998) or altitudinally parapatric (specimens in FMNH from Mt Soque) with Mastomys natalensis in Angola.

In a report devoted to the identity of Bocage’s Mus angolensis, Crawford-Cabral (1989b) noted that the type series was destroyed by fire in the Lisbon Museum in 1978. According to the original description the specimens represented a species with a tail much longer than head and body, white feet, soft and thick fur, and five pairs of teats, all characters of other species in Myomyscus. Crawford-Cabral considered Angolan specimens collected after 1890 outside of the Capangombe region and identified as angolensis to be another species. He proposed Praomys angolae for this rat and considered it a Mastomys, not an example of Myomyscus. In our view he simply renamed Bocage’s angolensis.