A Giant Tree-Dwelling Rat in the Solomon Islands Has Finally Discovered Western Scientists

The Solomon Islands — a commonwealth comprised of nearly one thousand island turn up north-east of Australia , between Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea — is an telling turning point of the globe . Dense , plushy rainforest blankets the majority of the island , and the commonwealth ’s coral reef biodiversity is among the rich in the world . Many of the plant and animals in the Solomon Islands have evolved in splendid isolation , and now , one of these animals has emerged from its idyllic surroundings , revealing itself to skill for the first fourth dimension : the vika ( Uromys vika ) , a big - arse rat four fourth dimension the size of even the heftiest of the familiar , urban center - slicker variety .

What , you were expect a gorgeous tropical bird or something ?

Described ina newly - published report in the Journal of Mammalogyby researchers at Chicago ’s Field Museum and the Solomon Islands ’ Zaira Resource Management Area , the vika is a muckle to behold . Including the scaly tail , the deep brown , rich rodent can be a base and a one-half long , and can weigh as much as a pineapple . The vika , like its close congenator , is an avid climber and likely drop most of its sentence high in the trees of the rainforest , skin around in the middle of the night much like a possum . This unexampled mintage can be distinguish from other Uromys coinage — many of which are also found in the Solomon Islands — by measurable conflict in skull shape and by its genes . So far , the vika is only make love from the island it was discovered upon , Vangunu .

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While Uromys vika is “ new ” in the formal , scholastic horse sense , the brute was already a part of the traditional knowledge of Vangunu ’s residents . It was intimate to many people on the island as a beefy crumb that like to guttle green coconut , boring into them with its furrowed incisors . Some of the earliest recorded account of the vika from topical anesthetic admit notes that it was supposedly common on some of the belittled , former plantation islands just offshore Vangunu . The vika ’s introduction to the scientific community came after years of searching , after lead subject author Tyrone Lavery heard descriptions of the rat from Vangunu topical anesthetic back in 2010 . After much time and cause attempting to come up the jumbo strikebreaker in Vangunu ’s rain forest , a single specimen was finally find sputter out of a felled Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . The observation and collection of a physical specimen was the final piece of the mystifier .

Currently , there is much to find out about the vika and its life style . For exemplar , it has n’t been reassert via observation if the animal mows down on coconut . However , on Vangunu , the nut of the Canarium tree — galip nuts — have been set up with round hole chewed into them and the interior inwardness take . Given the specific type of tooth marks on these nut case holes , it ’s think that the freshly - discovered giant rat are the culprit . If vika can drill through the duncish walls of the galip nut , it ’s not farfetched to think that coconuts may indeed be on the fare as well .

The vika is the first gnawer discovered in the Solomon Islands in 80 days , and suit into a remarkable pantheon of Solomon Island mammals , half of which are found nowhere else on Earth . Some of these admit thedwarf flying fox(the smallest fruit bat in the world ) and theGuadalcanal monkey - faced bat . This hotbed of mammalian endemism is largely due to the island ’ situation between landmasses : close enough for matter to fly or drift there now and again , but far enough away to make leave the islands difficult . The native land mammals of the Solomon Islands are almost exclusively bats and so-and-so , both animals that are patently quite good at progress to far - flung location .

William Duplessie

“ Vika ’s ancestors plausibly raft to the island on vegetation , and once they got there , they germinate into this wonderfully newfangled species , nothing like what they add up from on the mainland , ” explain Lavery ina instruction .

Tragically , so before long after its scientific introduction , Lavery and his confrere await the vika will be immediately fate “ critically endangered , ” since it is so rarified and its tiny native image on Vangunu is threatened with logging .

Jake Buehleris a Seattle area scientific discipline writer with an idolisation for the Tree of Life ’s weird , wild , and unsung — follow him onTwitteror at hisblog .

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