Where was the new species of giant rat found, and what are some more details about it?
SCIENTISTS have found a lost world of new species on an island in Papua New Guinea, including a giant rat, a frog with fangs and a fish that grunts. A BBC Natural History Unit found the rat trapped in an extinct volcano – Mt Bosavi – along with up to 40 undiscovered species. The team were filming a series on Mt Bosavi called Lost Land of the Volcano, due to be screened this week in the UK. At up to a metre in length, the rat has been named the Bosavi woolly rat and is said to be “as big as a cat”. The specimen trapped by the team weighed almost 1.5kg. Living almost a kilometre down in the volcano, the rat has thick fur and teeth which suggest a vegetarian diet. “This is one of the world’s largest rats,” biologist Dr Kristofer Helgen told the Daily Mail. Sources: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26037610-13762,00.
A team of biologists and filmmakers from the BBC have found strange spiders, a rat the size of a cat and a frog with fangs co-habiting in a pristine giant volcano in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The animals were found in the ‘lost world” of the Mount Bosavi crater, an extinct volcano so remote and inaccessible that no humans live there. Instead, an amazing array of exotic fauna has thrived. Among them is the Bosavi woolly rat, an over-sized – but vegetarian – rodent that measures almost 3 feet long and weighs in at 3.3lbs. Steve Greenwood, series producer for Lost Land of the Volcano, said that after scaling the volcano’s 2,800m summit, the team were rewarded by finding a wealth of new creatures. They suspect they may have discovered up to 40 new species, including approximately 16 species of frog, one species of gecko, at least three new species of fish, 20 species of insect and spider and one new species of bat. “Highlights include a camouflaged gecko, a fanged frog and a fish
The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world. The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano. It is one of a number of exotic animals found by the expedition team. Like the other exotic species, the rat is believed to live within the Mount Bosavi crater, and nowhere else. “This is one of the world’s largest rats. It is a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers,” says Dr Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist based at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who accompanied the BBC expedition team. Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8210000/8210394.
